Austen, Jane.The Novels.Oxford, 1923. Large Paper edition, #1/950 (1000). 10 volumes. 8vo, contemp. 3/4 crushed burgundy levant morocco, gilt, geometric-gilt spine compartments, t.e.g., marbled bds., by Baynton; very occasionally slightly scuffed. Color and other plates. Edited by R.W. Chapman. Presumably purchased by the last owner from Mabel Zahn at Sessler’s Bookshop, Phila. Estimate $800-1,200
Lot 319: Jane Austen
Novels & Letters - Lot 319
Austen, Jane. The Novels and Letters.New York: F.S. Holby, 1906. Stoneleigh Edition, #358/1250. 12 vols. 8vo, orig. 3/4 green morocco & marbled bds., t.e.g. gilt-lettered & floral spine; corners & edges occasionally slightly rubbed, a few spine heads scuffed or rubbed, 1 head band partly rubbed away, spines of 2 vols fading to brown. Color plates. Internally clean. Estimate $800-1,200
Other items of interest: a Shakespeare Head Bronte, 21 volumes of Thomas Hardy, and because we are all about Dickens all this year, there are several titles for sale, including this:
Lot 259: Charles Dickens
Dickens - Lot 259
Dickens, Charles. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. London: Chapman & Hall, 1870. 6 vols. (wrappers). First edition, 6 parts – all published 8vo, orig. printed blue green wrappers; minor wear. With 14 plates (incl. portrait). Scattered light foxing but internally generally clean and light. With all adverts. except the 4pp Wilcox & Gibbs concerning stitches adverts [ called for in part 6]. Includes the cork hats sheet in part 2. In custom gilt lettered brown cloth case & chemise. Hatton & Cleaver pp373-(384). Purchased by the last owner from Mabel Zahn at Sessler’s Bookshop, Phila. Estimate $300-500
And click here for offerings of Thomas Rowlandson: here are the details on one, published by R. Ackermann between 1809-[1811]: Jane Austen surely read these – she refers to Dr. Syntax in her letter of 2-3 March 1814 [Le Faye, Ltr. 97]. She writes to Cassandra from Henrietta St in London:
“I have seen nobody in London yet with such a long chin as Dr. Syntax…”
Lot 269: Thomas Rowlandson
Poetical Magazine - Lot 269
(Rowlandson, Thomas, et al. illustrators) Poetical Magazine. London: R. Ackermann, 1809-[1811]. 4 vols. 8vo, early 20th-century full triple gilt lettered paneled, mottled tan polished calf, spines gilt, turn ins gilt, a.e.g., green morocco spine labels by Root; very occasional minor scuffing. With 4 engraved titles & 52 plates (50 hand colored aquatints & engravings – 30 by Rowlandson of Doctor Syntax.) Complete with a leaf of rhymed adverts. Internally clean & bright. Book plates of Dr. Stoughton R Vogel, & Robert Alexander Montgomery. Bright bdgs. Contains original issue of Combe’s & Rowlandson’s Tour of Dr. Syntax under the title of “The School Master’s Tour.” Tooley 421. Purchased by the last owner from Mabel Zahn at Sessler’s Bookshop, Phila. Estimate $1,000-1,500
Rowlandson's Dr. Syntax - Lot 269
…with his very long chin!
*******************
Happy bidding!
[All images and text from the Freeman’s Auction website]
This article and book is generating so much online chat that I had to link to it:
“The First Sexual Revolution: Lust and Liberty in the 18th Century.” Adulterers and prostitutes could be executed and women were agreed to be more libidinous than men – then in the 18th century attitudes to sex underwent an extraordinary change… by Faramerz Dabhoiwala in The Guardian:
-and perhaps this whole book on the subject: The Covent Garden Ladies: Pimp General Jack and The Extraordinary Story of Harris’s List by Hallie Rubenhold – Tempus Publishing, 2005:
Visit The Library as Incubator Project for an interview with Kristin Hammargren on her upcoming one woman show, Discovering Austen (running Thursday, January 26 – Saturday, January 28, 7:30 p.m. at the Hemsley Theatre,821 University Avenue in Madison,WI).
[this lovely image from the article : by Miles Cole]
*Behind Jane Austen’s Door by Jennifer Forest – an ebook, sort of a cross between Bill Bryson’s At Home and Amanda Vickery’s works on Georgian homelife, but lots shorter: – have just started it, will report when done…
After retiring from a lifetime of teaching literature, Patricia Meyer Spacks embarked on a year-long project of rereading dozens of novels: childhood favorites, fiction first encountered in young adulthood and never before revisited, books frequently reread, canonical works of literature she was supposed to have liked but didn’t, guilty pleasures (books she oughtn’t to have liked but did), and stories reread for fun vs. those read for the classroom. On Rereading records the sometimes surprising, always fascinating, results of her personal experiment.
Spacks addresses a number of intriguing questions raised by the purposeful act of rereading: Why do we reread novels when, in many instances, we can remember the plot? Why, for example, do some lovers of Jane Austen’s fiction reread her novels every year (or oftener)? Why do young children love to hear the same story read aloud every night at bedtime? And why, as adults, do we return to childhood favorites such as The Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, and the Harry Potter novels? What pleasures does rereading bring? What psychological needs does it answer? What guilt does it induce when life is short and there are so many other things to do (and so many other books to read)? Rereading, Spacks discovers, helps us to make sense of ourselves. It brings us sharply in contact with how we, like the books we reread, have both changed and remained the same.
*The final book in Michael Thomas Ford’s trilogy of Jane as Vampire will be released on February 28, 2012:
Here is a review from Library Journal:
Ford, Michael Thomas. Jane Vows Vengeance. Ballantine. Feb. 2012.
c.288p. ISBN 9780345513670. pap. $15.
Author-turned-vampire Jane Austen wants to marry Walter, but fending off her soon-to-be mother-in-law and fear of revealing her Big Secret are sucking the fun out. Walter’s invitation to join colleagues on an architectural tour of Europe leads him to suggest a wedding-slash-honeymoon. The wedding party—including their friends Lucy and Ben and Walter’s mom, Miriam, and her dog—arrive in London anticipating the happy event, but it’s not to be. A guest from Jane’s far past arrives to object, and the remainder of the trip continues this inauspicious start, including the search for Crispin’s Needle, said to return a vampire’s soul. If the needle can be found, would it deliver a soul or kill the vampire trying?
Verdict: Ford’s final book in the trilogy (Jane Bites Back; Jane Goes Batty) is nicely connected with characters and ideas to the previous books, but it can also be read as a stand-alone. More architectural detail than literary asides, a fabulous back story for Miriam, and a sometimes overwhelming number of additional elements will surprise readers. Still, the key elements of a charmingly reluctant vampire, supportive friends, and flashes of brilliance offset by poor undead life-skills remain in full force. [Library marketing.]—Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH
*Coming in June 2012: London: A History in Verse, edited by Mark Ford (Belknap, 2012)
Called “the flour of Cities all,” London has long been understood through the poetry it has inspired. Now poet Mark Ford has assembled the most capacious and wide-ranging anthology of poems about London to date, from Chaucer to Wordsworth to the present day, providing a chronological tour of urban life and of English literature.
Nearly all of the major poets of British literature have left some poetic record of London: Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Johnson, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, and T.S. Eliot. Ford goes well beyond these figures, however, to gather significant verse of all kinds, from Jacobean city comedies to nursery rhymes, from topical satire to anonymous ballads. The result is a cultural history of the city in verse, one that represents all classes of London’s population over some seven centuries, mingling the high and low, the elegant and the salacious, the courtly and the street smart. Many of the poems respond to large events in the city’s history—the beheading of Charles I, the Great Fire, the Blitz—but the majority reflect the quieter routines and anxieties of everyday life through the centuries.
Ford’s selections are arranged chronologically, thus preserving a sense of the strata of the capital’s history. An introductory essay by the poet explores in detail the cultural, political, and aesthetic significance of the verse inspired by this great city. The result is a volume as rich and vibrant and diverse as London itself.
*Shannon Hale has a new book coming out on January 31, 2012 – Midnight in Austenland – another story with a different heroine set in the fictional Austenland as in her first Austen book… I liked that book, thought it was great fun, so will give this a try as well… $9.99 on my kindle
*World Book Night is taking shape for April 23, 2012. You can see the 25 titles that will be distributed to people in participating countries: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is among them! – for the other titles [and a fabulous book list], go here: http://www.worldbooknight.org/about-world-book-night/wbn-2012/the-books
NEH Seminar for college and university teachers: “Jane Austen and Her Contemporaries” June 18-July 20, 2012 http://nehseminar.missouri.edu/
“We will read four Austen novels (Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, and Northanger Abbey) and several novels by her contemporaries, including Anna Maria Porter, Jane West, and Mary Brunton. We will have several speakers join us in person or via Skype, including Jay Jenkins of Valancourt Books, who will talk to us about selecting, editing, and getting published a scholarly edition of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century novel. We will also be taking a group day-trip to the Spencer Library at the Universityof Kansas.”
Museum Musings – Exhibition Trekking:
*The Cambridge University Library has just opened an exhibition Shelf Lives: Four Centuries of Collectors and their Books January 18 – June 16, 2012
the bookshelf of Sir Geoffrey Keynes, noted bibliographer of Jane Austen (1929) – if you look closely at this bookshelf, you may notice a familiar spine or two of Austen’s works!
A New & Correct Plan of London [London, 1760], folding silk fan engraved by Richard Bennett.. Travel, Atlases, Maps & Natural History [L11405] Estimate: 4,000 – 6,000 GBP – Sold for: 11,875 GBP
Women’s dress retains a great similarity from age to age, together with a great instability in details, and therefore does not afford so much subject for remark as does men’s dress.
[excuse me? – a great similarity? an instability in detail? ]
*The Yale Center for British Art begins its 2012 film tribute to Dickens with the first film in the series “Dickens’London”, a 1924 12-minute silent film:
*The DeGoyler Library at Southern Methodist University is hosting a Dickens exhibit:
Charles Dickens: The First Two Hundred Years. An Exhibition from the Stephen Weeks Collection. January 19-May 12, 2012 – a catalogue is available for purchase: http://smu.edu/cul/degolyer/exhibits.htm
*Another image of Jane! A cigarette card from the NYPL Digital Gallery, from a collection of 50 cards of “Celebrities of British History” – here is the Jane Austen card and the verso with a short biography of Austen. You can see her illustrious company on the 49 other cards at the link below:
Specific Material Type: Photomechanical prints
Source: [Cigarette cards.] / Celebrities of British history : a series of 50
Location: Stephen A. Schwarzman Building/ George Arents Collection
Sometimes, entries from 18th century newspapers read more like the introduction to a Jane Austen novel than a Jane Austen Novel. Take this entry from the Gloucester Journal of 17 April 1797:
“Glocester, April 17 – Tuesday last was married at North Nibley, in this county, Mr John Parradice, of Wick, to Miss Sarah Knight, ofNorth Nibley, an agreeable young lady, with a large fortune.”
A groom named Paradise (almost), and a pleasant, rich lady; this story has the potential to make a rather good novel.
Mark your calendars for the upcoming Jane Austen Weekends at the Governor’s House in Hyde Park, Vermont – the new series on Emma starts this weekend, January 27-29, 2012. Check out the website for more details – if you cannot make the whole weekend, you might like to visit just for the Friday night lecture [this series on Emma will feature Hope Greenberg on fashion in Jane Austen’s time], or tea on Saturday, or brunch on Sunday where your knowledge of Emma will be bravely tested!
Here is the schedule – and note the special ‘in character’ weekend scheduled for August 10-12, 2012 – who might you like to be? – Emma Woodhouse or Miss Bates?? or do you dare to take on Frank Churchill?? Join the fun if you can!
Series 5: Emma
January 27 – 29, 2012
August 3 – 4, 2012
September 7 – 9, 2012
January 11 – 13, 2013
Series 6: Pride and Prejudice
January 25 – 17, 2013 (other dates to be announced)
A new card game based on the novels of Jane Austen has just been released. Called “Suitors and Suitability,” it is the first in a series and is based on Pride and Prejudice – the series will also include Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Persuasion – they ask you on their website to vote for which game you would like to see published next – alas! I am disappointed to not see Northanger Abbey in the offing! – surely a fine book for a card game where one could get lost in the dank hallways of a Gothic Abbey! – perhaps we should begin to rally for Henry Tilney as a most major suitable suitor!
The game for 2-6 players, age 13 and up, costs $24.95 – a tad steep for a card game, but you should play the demonstration game and see if it seems worth a dive into your pocket-book – the pictures are generally appealing, though Mr. Darcy seems sadly lacking [where is Colin Firth when we need him?]
[sorry, this has nothing to do with the cards – but who can resist this picture! – with thanks to Vic at Jane Austen Today for sharing this luscious shot!]
Well, back to the game – I have just spent a few minutes with the demo and need to give it more time to pass any sort of judgment – right now I am a bit befuddled! – one needs perhaps to buy it just to see what it is all about! – I do think it might be a perfect choice for the next game night of our budding co-ed book group – but take a look and see what you think – and let me know!
And an invitation from the publisher:
If you are near the Bay Area of California you might be interested in our upcoming game night. On Saturday, February 4th at 5:30 PM we will be serving tea with a traditional menu provided by a local caterer. Along with the tea service will be a chance to mingle in our elegant showroom and play the game. Period attire is admired but not required. For more information, and reservations please see our website. http://www.lumenaris.com/event_games.html
The Lumenaris Group, Inc
18675 Adams Ct. Suite H
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
Phone: 408-591-4034
And check out the other games offered – there are various puzzles, from easy to very difficult – for starters, you might be interested in this fashion puzzle!
[all images from Lumenaris.com, with the exception of Mr. Firth]
Well, first a very Happy New Year to one and all!! – I have been away from my computer, and find some of my gathered “news” is no longer actually new, so I include here just some goodies discovered on the internet, a good number only peripherally related to Jane, but interesting nonetheless… [or so I believe…]
News /Gossip
* How about taking a Jane Austen Cruise?! This coming July, you can head from Southampton to Guernsey, Spain and France for an 8-day cruise filled with all manner of Jane Austen diversions – http://janeaustencruise.com/
* The Amanda Vickery broadcast of The Many Lovers of Jane Austen may have only aired in the UK, but we can view it here, with thanks to Diana Birchall for sending me the video link:
You might also like to check in at Jane Austen’s Regency World blog to see a review of the show by Tony Grant and the numerous (some indignant!) comments on his take on the Fort Worth JASNA AGM. You should watch the video and then read the review and comment if you can…!
The Circulating Library
* If you have enjoyed the Bitch in a Bonnet blog, you will be interested to know that Rodi’s writings on the first three Austen novels are available for your ereader! – all for 99c… read about it here:
* Dr. Maureen Mulvihill spoke at the Florida Bibliophile Society on “The Evolution and Education of a Collector (1980s-): The Mulvihill Collection of Rare and Special Books and Images.” http://www.floridabibliophilesociety.org/mulvihill.html
* If you have an interest in bygone etiquette books, Abebooks compiled a list several months ago – here are some items for sale by various booksellers:
The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility - Emily Thornwell, 1856
Jane Austen’s six complete novels and her juvenilia are examined in the context of civil society and gender. Steiner’s study uses a variety of contexts to appraise Austen’s work: Scottish Enlightenment theories of societal development, early-Romantic discourses on gender roles, modern sociological theories on the civilizing process and postmodern feminist positions on moral development and interpersonal relations.
Austen is presented as a writer who not only participated in late eighteenth-century debates, but who is able to address twenty-first-century concerns of a theoretical and practical nature.
* Gentleman’s Magazine exhibit at University of Otago – not yet online:
Gentleman's Magazine - Monash University
Special Collections,University of Otago Library, is fortunate to have an entire run of the Gentleman’s Magazine from 1731 to 1866. Started by Edward Cavein January 1731, and printed form many years at St. John’s Gate in London, it was a ‘repository of all things worth mentioning’. It was the first ‘magazine’ in the modern sense. It was also the most important periodical in 18th century England, reflecting in its pages the diversity of Georgian life, politics and culture. It covered current affairs, political opinion, lead articles from other journals, miscellaneous information such as quack cures and social gossip, prices of stocks, science and technological discoveries, notices of births, deaths, and marriages, ecclesiastical preferments, travel, parliamentary debates, and poetry. Writers such as Dr Johnson, John Hawkesworth, Richard Savage, and Anna Seward were just a few of the thousands who contributed to it. At 6d per issue, it was an outstanding bargain. It remains an inexhaustible mine of information for scholars of eighteenth century life, and because of the wealth of genealogical information and records, it has become an important resource for family historians.
Our exhibition ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine. The 18th century Answer to Google ‘ begins on 21 December 2011 and runs through to 16 March 2012, just in time for the new student intake. Eventually it will be online.
But while we wait for that – you can visit their latest online exhibition “In Search of Scotland”
As we will are celebrating Charles Dickens 200th birthday throughout 2012, I will be posting a number of Dickens-related goings-on – I can only think that Austen would heartily approve of giving him his just due, and thus, he now has his own category in the PPWR:
1. A bookseller’s list of some of his works that they have for sale [Tavistock Books]: http://tinyurl.com/7c2t2y3
2. This one is very exciting as it combines my love of Dickens and my love of London and makes full use of my iphone capabilities: Dickens Dark London from The Museum of London:
* Thomas Jefferson’s Granddaughter in Queen Victoria’s England: The Travel Diary of Ellen Wayles Coolidge, 1838-1839. Edited by Ann Lucas Birle and Lisa A. Francavilla. Hardbound, 464 pages, 20 color and 10 black and white illustrations. Copublished by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. http://www.monticellocatalog.org/205632.html
Ellen Wayles Coolidge arrived in London in June 1838 at the advent of QueenVictoria’s reign – the citizens were still celebrating the coronation. During her nine-month stay, Coolidge kept a diary that reveals the uncommon education of her youth, when she lived and studied at Monticello with her grandfather Thomas Jefferson. This volume brings the full text of her diary to publication for the first time, opening up her text for today’s reader with carefully researched annotations that provide the historical context.
London’s clocks, theaters, parks, public buildings, and museums all come under Coolidge’s astute gaze as she and her husband, Joseph Coolidge, Jr., travel the city and gradually gain entry into some of the most coveted drawing rooms of the time. Coolidge records the details of her conversations with writers such as Samuel Rogers, Thomas Carlyle, and Anna Jameson and activists including Charles Sumner and Harriet Martineau. She gives firsthand accounts of the fashioning of the young queen’s image by the artists Charles Robert Leslie and Sir Francis Chantrey and takes notes as she watches the queen open Parliament and battle the first scandal of her reign. Her love of painting reawakened, Coolidge chronicles her opportunities to view over four hundred works of art held in both public and private collections, acknowledging a new appreciation for the modern art of J. M. W. Turner and a fondness for the Dutch masters.
As rich as her experience in England proves to be, Coolidge often reflects on her family in Boston andVirginia and her youth at Monticello. As she encounters her mother’s schoolgirl friends and recalls the songs her grandfather sang while working in his study, Coolidge’s thoughts return to Monticello and the lessons she learned there. Across the spectrum of her observations, Coolidge’s diary is always strikingly vivid and insightful – and frequently quite funny.
* Cambridge University Press has just published Samuel Johnson in Context, a collection of 47 short essays about the great lexicographer and his world. The book, which is aimed at a college and general audience, is edited by DSNA member Jack Lynch (also author of The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of English from Shakespeare to South Park [2009]).Lynda Mugglestone contributes an article on “Dictionaries” and Lisa Berglund, the introductory chapter on “Life.” Visit the Cambridge UP website for a complete Table of Contents: http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item6476720/?site_locale=en_GB
Few authors benefit from being set in their contemporary context more than Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson in Context is a guide to his world, offering readers a comprehensive account of eighteenth-century life and culture as it relates to his work. Short, lively and eminently readable chapters illuminate not only Johnson’s own life, writings and career, but the literary, critical, journalistic, social, political, scientific, artistic, medical and financial contexts in which his works came into being. Written by leading experts in Johnson and in eighteenth-century studies, these chapters offer both depth and range of information and suggestions for further study and research. Richly illustrated, with a chronology of Johnson’s life and works and an extensive bibliography, this book is a major new work of reference on eighteenth-century culture and the age of Johnson. [from CUP site]
* John Sutherland, Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives (Profile Books, 2011)
[ok. I have finished this – will post a short review and a compilation of other reviews – very mixed – but most Austen people seem to be universally disappointed … a shame really – it should have been better…]
Articles of Interest
* Rudd, Amanda. “The Spaces Between: Creating A Space for Female Sexuality in Frances Burney’s Evelina, Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, and Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.” Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (2011): 82-91. Full text here: http://journals.tdl.org/plaza/article/viewFile/5934/pdf_415
Queens in Waiting: Charlotte & Victoria [26 November 2011 – 9 September 2012]
Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold
[by William Thomas Fry, after George Dawe, 1817]
In the early nineteenth century two young women would occupy the position of ‘heir to the throne’ in quick succession. One died tragically early, while the other, born to replace her, went on to reign for over sixty years as Queen Victoria. Telling a tale of romance, sorrow and renewed hope, this display focuses on the fateful linkage in the history of Princess Charlotte of Wales and Princess Victoria of Kent, and how both their lives pivoted around Prince Leopold – beloved husband to one, and trusted uncle to the other.
Featuring a range of portraits in wax, watercolour, and print, as well as commemorative images, it includes an engraving of Princess Charlotte’s last portrait from life by Sir Thomas Lawrence, completed posthumously. By bringing together these images, the display traces the idealised nature of the imagery used to represent a young woman in direct line to the throne at a time when the nation tired of the debauched Prince Regent’s rule. [from the NPG website]
* Exhibition at the Boston Public Library – Rare Books Exhibition Room, through March 30, 2012:
From Pen to Print: the Handwriting Behind the Book features handwritten letters, notes, postcards, and other manuscripts that reveal personal, private, and otherwise veiled aspects of the production of books. Putting authors’ manuscript materials on display alongside their print books, the exhibition reveals the passions, obsessions, lofty dreams, and gritty realizations triggered by the writing and publishing process. These materials capture the relationships between 19th- and 20th-century American authors, editors, and readers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Cary, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Frost, and more. Open in the Rare Books Lobby at the Central Library in Copley Square through Friday, March 30, 2012, 617-536-5400. Special hours: M, T, W, F: 9am-5pm; Th: 11am-7pm
* American Christmas Cards 1900-1960: by Kenneth Ames: the exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center is now over, but you can read about it here:
And you can follow the Museum’s Textile Tuesday, a weekly post of a piece from their extensive textile collection : http://charlestonmuseum.tumblr.com/
Shopping: [I’m done with shopping…]
For Fun:
Visit the blog of the Jane Austen House Museum [now penned by Julie Wakefield of Austenonly!] for a post on board games for the holidays – “Snakes and Ladders the Jane Austen Way” …
Jane Austen in Vermont 