Pride & Prejudice is the chosen book for the October Avid Reader Book Club at Abebooks. You can go to the synopsis and reading guide as well as the forum discussion board to participate or just “lurk” at all the chatter…
Category: Books
Book News ~ “Life in the Country”
The British Library has just published ” ‘Life in the Country’‘ “a beautiful book featuring quotations by Jane Austen illustrated by charming silhouette drawings by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, producing an enchanting vision of Life in the Country filled with artistry and wit.
Jane Austen’s lively text and her nephew’s astute observations of nature combine in a way that uniquely illustrates life in the English countryside. Life in the Country was created by Freydis Jane Welland, the great great great grand-niece of Jane Austen, and owner of the silhouette album produced by James Edward Austen-Leigh.
Welland writes in the Preface to the book, “These delightful silhouettes have brought pleasure to the Austen family for generations… they retain the same freshness, vigour and charm that make Jane Austen’s writings so engaging.” Jane Austen herself said in a letter to her niece Caroline, written from Chawton in 1817: “We were happy to see Edward, it was an unexpected pleasure, and he makes himself as agreeable as ever, sitting in such a quiet comfortable way making his delightful sketches.”
Austen-Leigh later brought the fine art of silhouettes to perfection, creating wonderfully evocative images of landscapes and the creatures that live there. Life in the Country was originally produced as a limited edition fine-press book in 2005, with contributions by Maggie Lane, Joan Ray and Joan Austen-Leigh. This new hardback edition brings these lovely illustrations to a wide audience for the very first time.”
For further information, images or review copies, contact Ruth Howlett at the British Library Press Office: +44 ( 0 )20 7412 7112 or ruth.howlett@bl.uk
Life in the Country by Freydis Jane Welland, is published in hardback by the British Library, 2 October 2008, price £14.95 ( 112 pages, 220 x 195mm, 96 illustrations, ISBN 978 0 7123 4985 7 ).
Available from the British Library Shop ( tel: +44 ( 0 )20 7412 7735 / e-mail: bl-bookshop@bl.uk ) and online at www.bl.uk/shop as well as other bookshops throughout the UK.
[Quoted from Media-Newswire.com] You can also order it from your local bookseller.
Adventures Befalling a Janeite in Chicago…
Back from the AGM! and it was, as expected, fabulous! I had decided to carry nothing electronic with me (except, I confess, the necessary cell phone) and take a break from this computer-driven world and really retreat into the early nineteenth-century. So now I will retrace my four days in Austen’s world and fill you in on “all things Jane”; and only lament that it shall be days before I can return to Letter No. 3, and a terrible confession that the first day found me scouting the Emporium…
Day One Diary:
Arrived surprisingly on time midday Thursday and immediately perused the Emporium. Expected a quick run-through to see the display of books and merchandise, but, of course was captivated by all the shopping opportunities, and for one who can browse among just books for hours, this was a happy intro to the whole weekend.
Jane Austen Books, with the torch recently passed from Pat Latkin to Jennifer Weinbrecht and her two daughters Amy and Beth [click here for their website, soon to be updated], had the usual feast of old and new, and after semi-guiltily adding to my luggage weight moved on to the Ontario-based Traveler’s Tales, a bookstore often at the AGMs that never fails with its offering of used and rare literary, history, and domestic arts titles [am now in trouble with my luggage weight concerns and will need to ship any further purchases…]
A quick stop at Figaro, and antiques shop of “Parisian Interiors” whose lovely display of decorative arts (think tea cups and Burleigh China in shades of pink and blue,) scarves for self-adornment, french soaps, and fashion illustrations – all a tempting treat and a perfect addition to the Emporium atmosphere.
Back to more books with a visit with Jones Books [publisher of Kim Wilson’s Jane Austen and Tea and her new book on In the Garden with Jane Austen as well as other Austen-related titles], and then onto the locally owned Barbara’s Bookstore, also with a nice selection of titles, including the new Vintage Classics series of all of Austen’s novels with EXCELLENT covers depicting regency fashion illustrations (see the blog Adventures in Reading for a look at all the covers and here at Amazon.com to purchase, and also at RandomHouse.ca for another set of new covers for Austen with contemporary and simple designs)
Then on to several booths of fashion…bonnets, dresses, laces, reticules; there is so much talent out there, that I am tempted to dust off my last-used-twenty-years-ago sewing machine (but alas! can one sew AND blog?? doubtful…), and finally a jewelry designer who turns antique buttons, cuff-links, tie-clasps into any number of gorgeous wearable creations (and who I am sorry to say has no website)..
For this Lizzie-like bonnet, visit Bee in Your Bonnet, for custom-made regency style millinery
The Regional Chapter tables never fail to please and delight with numerous cards, calendars, t-shirts, bookmarks, paper-dolls, etc…all perfect gifts for the Janeite on your list (go to the JASNA site’s merchandise page for a sampling)… and don’t forget to order your 2009 calendar(s) from the Wisconsin Chapter (there is no picture here, so just trust me that they are the best yet and will be a pleasure to look at throughout the whole year!)
So for someone who really hates to shop (excepting for books…heck, we all need at least ONE vice!), my bag is now indeed overweight and I must ready myself for the evening festivities…
Jeff Nigro of the Art Institute of Chicago (currently the Director of Adult Programs), who says that his relationship with Austen was “love at first read” (I love this!), spoke on “Visualizing Jane Austen & Jane Austen Visualizing.” With references to the 1995 P&P (Ehle / Firth) showing the scene with Lydia tossing her recently-purchased bonnet, he stressed that in the novel there is no description of the bonnet, leaving the reader to imagine its ugliness, while in the movie it has to be visualized and so indeed the movie creator struggles to get this just right (and why it may not be the bonnet YOU have been imagining all these years!)
Mr. Nigro then shifted to visualizing Austen herself, i.e. the two drawings of Austen by her sister Cassandra, the 1804 watercolor and the 1810-11 sketch, and how the illusive nature of both has resulted in varying and disparate interpretations, as well as outright editing to fit contemporary views.
And finally Nigro reviewed the various illustrators of Austen’s novels, from Thomson and the Brocks to 20th-century artists, and ending and coming full-circle with the visualizing aspect of movie adaptations. He asked aloud how Jane Austen might feel about these various adaptations and concluded that she would likely approve, as he referenced her letters voicing her various opinions on how her characters looked by comparing them to portraits she viewed (though never finding one satisfactory for her own vision of Mrs. Darcy.)
A fabulous talk!…and a terrific preface to the next three days! [stay-tuned tomorrow for Day 2…there is a Darcy treat in the offing….ah! but what a tease…he does not show up until Day 4!]
Location, Location…for Austen & Bronte
East Riddlesden Hall in Keighley, West Yorkshire was the setting for Lost in Austen, its 17th-century interior updated for Regency era style. The house will also be the setting for the upcoming TV-remake of Wuthering Heights, to be broadcast in early 2009. Click here for an article on the house.
For information on the Bronte production, click here for IMDV. There is also yet another screen version on tap (or sort-of) … see the Bronte Blog for the latest news of this not-quite-happening-yet production.
Essential Austen: Kirstin Olsen’s “All Things Austen”
Kirstin Olsen’s 2-volume work titled “All Things Austen” was published in 2005 and sells for $157.95 at Greenwood Publishing and at Amazon for the same, and not much less on any of the used book sites [but please note that Greenwood is at present having a sale on this 2-vol. set for $110. + shipping and taxes, so this is worth a look]
…so it is a with pleasure that I see that the paperback concise edition is in pre-release at Greenwood for $29.95 (available 10/30/08)…it was released in the UK on 8/30/08 and can be ordered on Amazon.uk [see Amazon.uk to order]; it is available on Amazon.com for pre-order, and also already available on several of the used book sites.
Here is the product description of the softcover edition from Greenwood Publishing (see the listing for the hardcover edition for that description, as well as numerous reviews).
Willoughby (Sense and Sensibility) drives a curricle not a gig – what does this say about him? Captain Wentworth (Persuasion) and Fanny’s brother William (Mansfield Park) follow the ‘King’s Service’ at sea – what sort of life did they find there? Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Pride and Prejudice) is called Lady Catherine, not Lady de Bourgh – what does this very important distinction signify? Abridged from the critically acclaimed All Things Austen (Greenwood, 2005), this similarly formatted encyclopedia takes readers from the works of Jane Austen into her universe. More than 70 alphabetically arranged entries provide rich and fascinating historical details on the form and function of everyday and obscure objects that are mentioned in her novels. A selection of illustrations accompany the lively and often humorous entries that bring her fiction to life. Jane Austen’s first readers would have needed no help in understanding references to their everyday lives. But early nineteenth-century card games, dining habits, social etiquette, occupations and dozens of other topics are not immediately clear to her readers nearly two hundred years later. In this encyclopedia, students and devotees of Jane Austen will become familiar with what her characters ate, wore and did for recreation. Impeccably researched information is presented about domestic items, the social scene, the workplace, the church, special events and rituals, and everyday customs that constituted life in Jane Austen’s England. Included are entries on:
- Bath
- Cards
- Carriages and Coaches
- Clergy
- Entertainment
- Food
- Hats
- Navy
- Music
- Servants
- Tea
- Teeth
- West Indies
- And Many More
Readers can find citations of specific works by Austen, or they can look up terms or concepts. A bibliography arranged according to broad subjects lists major works for further reading.
I have not seen this new concise edition to compare the books and see what was left on the cutting room floor, but will let you know as soon as I get a copy and can review the book for you … but what I do know that this is an “essential Austen” title, without any doubt…
Further Reading: see the review by Carrie Bebris of the 2-volume edition in the Spring 2006 JASNA News.
“Jezebel” on 75 Books Every Woman Should Read…
Another reading list! “75 books every woman should read,” Jezebel’s response to Esquire’s list of the same, but for men (and filled with “old white dudes” as Jezebel so aptly says.) The initial list of twenty titles, posted at Jezebel.com on September 18th, generated 388 comments that add another 55 books to the list….and nice to know that Austen’s Pride & Prejudice made the original 20 list! [and see the Esquire slide show… it is a wonderful compilation that includes Faulkner, Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Raymond Carver, Kerouac, etc, but I find only ONE woman in the mix: Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find.]
Round-up…all things Austen, week of Sept. 14…
Lots out there this week, much about Lost in Austen (which I have not yet watched…oh woe is me!), and a few other tidbits of interest…
Fashion on Main, an exhibit at the University of Texas; see the site for a search-able database of the collection (though the “search” feature is under construction; you can browse the site), and references to other fashion resources.
And more on fashion in the time of Marie Antoinette, read this post on the Queen’s modist (clothing creator) at the Paper Crown Queen Blog, where there is a host of information and pictorials on crowns.
And the ongoing saga of “Lost in Austen” and the many reviews and opinions thereof: see Austenblog for its usual candid round-up of comments, and also today for Episode 3, and Jane Austen’s World Blog for a nice review of Episode 2, and another review at Austenprose.
See the Times-Picayune (LA) write-up of a Jane Austen Festival in Mandeville, LA on September 13 (alas! I missed it!….but there is another in March, so put it on your calendar if you happen to be in Louisiana): an Austen “Regency Revisited” Day at the Mandeville Trailhead Pavilion. Organizers of the Jane Austen Festival host a morning of music, dancing, a fashion show and workshop, 10 a.m.-1. Period dancing with free lessons begins, at 10 a.m. The public is invited to bring costumes/outfits/accessories and experts will demonstrate how to convert them into Regency style apparel, appropriate for the festival in March. Free. For details, visit http://www.janeaustenfestival.org/. or call 985.624.5683.
And here is a journalist from the Herald.ie who has had it with adaptations of classic literature, especially Austen “who has colonised television in a way that no other dead author has managed.” But alas! she informs the reader that the gorgeous Rupert Penry-Jones of Spooks (MI-5 in the U.S.) and the ITV Persuasion, will play in a new television version of John Buchan’s oft-filmed The Thirty-Nine Steps. Can’t wait!
Austenprose continues to offer us the journaling of Virginia Claire Tharrington, the intern at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath: see her first post and this week’s. We are all SO envious!
Jane Odiwe tells of her newest book being published by Sourcebooks next year: Mrs. Brandon’s Invitation, a sequel to Sense & Sensibility.
Several reviews of Marsha Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys, are sited at Austenprose; see Jane Austen Today for an interview with the author.
An article in Piecework Magazine is mentioned on Austenblog; also see the comment from the current President of JASNA, Marsha Huff, referencing a Persuasions article on the coverlet that Jane Austen, Cassandra and their mother made (the quilt now hangs in Chawton), so you, too, can make a replica of this quilt. [See also my previous reference to the JASA article on this topic.]
Ms. Place at JA’s World continues the column with Marjorie Gilbert and her creation of a regency gown… this week is about the necessary regency undergarments.
Excellent sleuthing by Laurel Ann at Austenprose who writes “The Legend of the Lost Sequel“, about the publishing history of D.A. Bonavia-Hunt’s Pemberely Shades.
See the article in the Western Daily Press about the Crazy for Jane movie premiere at the Bath JA Festival. The documentary tells the tale of contemporary publishers rejection of Jane Austen novels…shame on them!
Another Austen sequel
In some random searching today I discovered that come December, there will be yet another Austen sequel in the mix. Titled The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet: a Novel, the book is by Colleen McCullough of Thorn Birds fame and will be published by Simon & Schuster. You can pre-order it at Amazon. [note that it will be published in Australia in early October by HarperCollins…read their synopsis and pre-order here.]
Lizzy Bennet married Mr Darcy, Jane Bennet married Mr Bingley – but what became of the middle daughter, Mary? Discover what came next in the lives and loves of Jane Austen’s much loved Bennet family in this Pride and Prejudice spin-off from an international bestselling author Readers of Pride and Prejudice will remember that there were five Bennet sisters. Now, twenty years on, Jane has a happy marriage and large family; Lizzy and Mr Darcy now have a formidable social reputation; Lydia has a reputation of quite another kind; Kitty is much in demand in London’s parlours and ballrooms; but what of Mary? Mary is quietly celebrating her independence, having nursed her ailing mother for many years. She decides to write a book to bring the plight of the poor to everyone’s attention. But with more resolve than experience, as she sets out to travel around the country, it’s not only her family who are concerned about her. Marriage may be far from her mind, but what if she were to meet the one man whose own fiery articles infuriate the politicians and industrialists? And if when she starts to ask similar questions, she unwittingly places herself in great danger?
[quote from Fantastic Fiction]
A Journey through Jane Austen’s Letters
I have read many of Austen’s letters through the years, and certainly know the majority of quotes that are repeated over and over…but I am finally committing myself to going through each letter in chronological order and reading through all the accompanying notes and references ( my source and Essential Austen title: Jane Austen’s Letters, collected and edited by Deirdre Le Faye, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, 1997)…. and I invite you all to take this journey with me, one letter at a time, one day at a time.
So often these letters, and the sentences or words from them, are quoted out of context, and I feel compelled to make some sense of it all, to go back to the original source and get a feel for what Austen was really saying. There are so many gaps in the letters, either from Cassandra’s choice to edit and / or destroy many of her sister’s writings, or because the sisters were not apart and hence no need to write (and of course there are only a few letters from Cassandra herself, and because Austen often refers back to a received letter, and with her constant comments on her sister’s writing abilities and humor, the reader is saddened by this loss.)
There are also many primary and secondary sources on the letters and I will discuss these periodically (see also the Letters Page, which I will continually add to), but I think I better just start the process and let it evolve from there. I encourage you to comment, suggest sources, offer suggestions or interpretation, so please visit often and participate. For those of you who know the letters backwards and forwards, and for those just discovering them, please take this journey with me. I think all of us might learn something new along the way. I know I already have….
This will be the format:
- letter number
- date
- sender (their location) / recipient (their location)
- location of letter today
- synopsis; quotes of import; comment
So today I start with Letter No. 1:
- January 9 – 10 (Sat, Sun) 1796
- Jane (Steventon) to Cassandra (Kintbury, Newbury [Rev. Fowles home])
- Original MS untraced
This is Austen’s first documented letter and one of the most quoted. It is here that Jane writes of her attachment to Tom Lefroy and she refers to him often in this letter…”I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.” She tells of the balls- “we had an exceedingly good ball last night”, who she danced with (Warren, Charles Watkins, and “fighting hard” to escape John Lyford), commenting on Miss Heathcote (“[she] is pretty, but not near so handsome as I expected”), and the many references to friends that we meet again and again in her letters. We read of her latest fashion thoughts, the silk stockings she cannot afford but the white gloves and pink persian (silk) she can, and much on her brother Charles and brother Henry and his latest plan to obtaining a lieutenancy.
The letter ends with another lengthy reference to Tom Lefroy: “he has but one fault…his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore he wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded.”
So in this first letter, (Jane was 20 years old writing this letter on Cassandra’s 23rd birthday and the letter opens with “In the first place I hope you will live twenty-three years longer”) we are introduced into Austen’s life, her family and friends, her likes and dislikes, and her biting wit, her poking fun at others and so very often herself. Her letters to her sister were entertainment for both of them when they were apart, and in just these few pages we are drawn into this late 18-century world, with all its domestic goings-on, and we are glad to be in such company. These letters are a veritable feast!
Old Friends and New Fancies (a review)
A guest-post from Nancy Charkes, a JASNA-Vermont member who is also active in her ‘winter’ JASNA region of Eastern Pennsylvania:
Like Marianne, I believe that first attachments are forever, and cannot be superseded. So, once I fell in love with Jane Austen, no sequel, pastiche, or derivative, could interest me. Not for me the middle age of the Darcy marriage, or Jane Austen as Miss Marple, or a 21st-century chick waking up in the Regency period. The language was wrong, the irony was lacking, the bite was dulled. But along came Col. Brandon, or rather, Sybil Brinton. Truth be told, she came along nearly 100 years ago, but only recently did I discover her book in a contemporary reprint. Old Friends and New Fancies: an Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen was written in 1913 and republished in 2007 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Old Friends bring together many of the main characters of all six novels as a social network of friends and acquaintances. From Bath to London to the great country estates in Derbyshire, people we know quite well are linked in a busy social life that is full of budding attachments, misunderstandings, and eventual reconciliations. The language is right, although lacking the subtle irony of Jane Austen. The voice is that of the observer, the storyteller.
Kitty Bennet, visiting her sisters Mrs. Darcy and Mrs. Bingley, sets her cap for William Price, who is home on shore leave, and visiting in the country. William, however, is attracted to Georgiana Darcy, who, out of friendship to Kitty, rejects Capt. Price’s addresses in spite of her own warm feelings towards him.
Col. Fitzwilliam, having been introduced to Mary Crawford in Bath, falls in love with her. His evident interest is, of course, subject to the arrogant meddling of Lady Catherine, with an almost fatal outcome. Besides, gossip reports that Miss Crawford is the constant companion of Sir Walter Elliot and his haughty daughter Elizabeth, and is almost sure to be soon the second Lady Elliot.
Along the way, Mrs. Jennings stirs the pot; there are balls at Pemberley and Desborough; reference is made to Darcy, Bingley, and Ferrars offspring. There are hunting mishaps, heroes, and a cameo of Emma Knightley. Elizabeth Darcy manages with good sense and astute understanding; Jane Bingley is calm, facilitating with kindness, and there are just the right number of weddings at the end.
[submitted by Nancy Charkes]
Jane Austen in Vermont 
