The Penny Post Weekly Review* 

June 4, 2011

News and Gossip: 

1.   “Josiah Wedgwood Tradesman – Tycoon, firing up the modern Age” at The Culture Concept Circle:  http://www.thecultureconcept.com/circle/josiah-wedgwood-tradesman-tycoon-firing-up-the-modern-age

 2.  http://www.e-enlightenment.com/ – free access through the month of June:   user ID: ee2011 / PW:  enlightenment

3.  How timely is this, as I just started to re-read Evelina last week! You can follow the Group read of Frances Burney’s Evelina at The Duchess of Devonshire’s Gossip Guide: here is the first post: http://georgianaduchessofdevonshire.blogspot.com/2011/06/evelina-volume-1-letters-1-20-and.html

The full reading schedule is here: join in if you can!http://georgianaduchessofdevonshire.blogspot.com/2011/05/evelina-group-read-rundown.html

• 2 June: Volume 1 Letters 1-20
• 9 June: Volume 1 Letter 21- Volume 2 Letter 6 (21-37)
• 16 June: Volume 2 Letter 7- 22 (38-53)
• 23 June: Volume 2 Letter 23- Volume 3 Letter 9 (54-71)
• 30 June: Volume 3 Letter 10-23 (72-84)

4.  In the UK: The Jane Austen Regency Week [ June 18 – June 26, 2011], celebrating the time Jane Austen spent in Alton and Chawton, is sponsored by the Alton Chamber of Commerce – website with event information here: http://www.janeaustenregencyweek.co.uk/index.html

5.  As part of the above Regency Week celebration, the Chawton House Library will be hosting tea, talk, and tours on June 21^st and 23^rd : http://www.chawton.org/news/

6.  Two posts on the British and their lovely habit, the drinking of tea: at Mary Ellen Foley’s Anglo-American Experience blog:

Part 1: http://mefoley.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/tea-part-1/
Part 2: http://mefoley.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/tea-part-2/
Part 3: http://mefoley.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/tea-part-3/
Part 4:  coming soon, so check back

7.  Dressing the Part: Dolley Madison’s Life Through Fashion, an exhibit at James Madison’s Montpelier, June 15, 2011 – March 29, 2012: http://www.montpelier.org/explore/collections/dressing_the_part.php

8.  The In Fashion: High Style 1620-2011 exhibit at The Shelburne Museum opens June 18, 2011: http://shelburnemuseum.org/exhibitions/in-fashion/

9.  An interview with Diana Birchall at Maria Grazia’s The Jane Austen Book Club: [includes a book giveaway] http://thesecretunderstandingofthehearts.blogspot.com/2011/06/talking-jane-austen-with-diana-birchall.html

10.  I don’t even know where to begin re: V. S. Naipaul’s trashing women writers and Jane Austen’s “sentimentality” [see this article at the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers ]

– but as one gentleman on one of the listservs I subscribe to so eloquently said: “Oh yeah Naipaul, how many movies have been made from YOUR books, huh?”

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New Books just out / about to be: 

1.  Why Jane Austen? By Rachel Brownstein. ColumbiaUniversity Press, 2011:  http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15390-4/why-jane-austen  [publication date: June 16, 2011 or thereabouts – more on this book next week!]

2.  Vauxhall Gardens, by David Coke and Alan Borg:  http://www.vauxhallgardens.com/ – the book is to be published by Yale University Press on June 8, 2011

3.  Jane Austen: Two Centuries of Criticism, by Laurence Mazzeno. Camden Press, 2011:

http://www.camden-house.com/store/viewitem.asp?idproduct=13605

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A few blogs / websites to check out:

1.  This one deserves repeating:  The Jane Austen Music Transcripts Collection at Flinders Academic Commons, transcribed by Gillian Dooley [this is a wonderful resource, most all from Austen’s music manuscript notebooks]: http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/dspace/handle/2328/15193

2.  William Godwin’s Diary: Reconstructing a Social and Political Culture, 1788-1836:  http://godwindiary.politics.ox.ac.uk/   [husband to Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley’s father, Austen’s time]

3.  The Beau Monde Blog:  http://thebeaumondeworld.wordpress.com/

4.  The Carlyle Letters Online:  http://carlyleletters.dukejournals.org/ [i.e Thomas and Jane]

5.  The George Eliot blog:  [new!]http://desperatelyseekinggeorge.wordpress.com/

6.  The Yale Center for British Art – their fabulous new website:  http://britishart.yale.edu/

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* I hope to return to doing a weekly update of various Austen-related discoveries – so much out there – so little time – one must set aside some time for BOOKS, don’t you think??

Copyright @2011 Deb Barnum, at Jane Austen in Vermont