An Afternoon with Susan Wolfson and her Annotated Northanger Abbey

October 12, 2015October 12, 2015 BookLady Deb3 Comments

I welcome JASNA-Vermont member Margaret Harrington, who has written a few words on our last JASNA meeting. As part of the Burlington Book Festival, we were fortunate to have Susan J. Wolfson, Professor of English at Princeton University, speak on her annotated edition of Northanger Abbey (Harvard UP 2014). With many thanks to Champlain College for allowing us their fabulous space in Aiken Hall, to our hospitality team Hope Greenberg and Heather Brothers, and all our generous bakers for the usual delicious fare! We were all very honored for the opportunity to listen to and talk with Dr. Wolfson, who made us all love and appreciate Northanger Abbey all the more.

We at JASNA-Vermont also heartily thank JASNA (the Jane Austen Society of North America) for graciously offering us a grant so we could bring Dr. Wolfson to Vermont for this Burlington Book Festival event – we could not have done it without them!

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Susan J. Wolfson spoke on “Jane Austen before She Became Jane Austen” at our JASNA-Vermont September 27^th meeting which was also an event for the Burlington Book Festival.

Dr. Wolfson gave a multi-layered talk centered on Northanger Abbey, the first book Jane Austen wrote and sold. In an engaging lecture the Princeton professor placed the book into the history of the time so that we, the audience and readers, could understand events behind the episodes of the novel. We gained new insights into what captured the young author’s imagination because we were given a lively narration of the London riots, Sir William Pitt’s system of surveillance, the social circus in Bath, and most of all, the template of the Gothic novel on which Austen based Northanger Abbey.

Wolfson’s talk wrapped the novel in the fabric of the society of the time so that we could understand the characters better, especially the dynamic between Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland. We also were given provocative ideas

such as Northanger Abbey is about training the mind of the reader, and that Jane Austen was not really interested in married life yet her first book has a Meta marriage plot. We learned that although this was her first novel it was not published until after the author’s death and there were years when it sat on the publisher’s shelf prompting Jane Austen to sign her complaint to the publisher as Mrs. Ashton Dennis, an acronym for MAD.

As I write this short report, I have before me on my desk the Jane Austen Northanger Abbey Annotated Edition edited by Susan J. Wolfson. It is a beautiful book to see, to touch, to open, to smell, and soon I will be reading it. This gives a whole new life to the book for me because I had reread it on my eBook before the lecture. How wonderful to look forward to this edition after attending such an insightful, interesting, accessible, engaging talk.

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Some photos from our event:

Co-Rc Marcia M

Hope G setting up food

Heather B, Theresa R, and our youngest JASNA-Vermont member!

Maryann P with more food

Susan Wolfson with Champlain College student Kes S.

©2015 Jane Austen in Vermont; text and images by Margaret Harrington

Austen Literary History & Criticism · Books · Collecting Jane Austen · Jane Austen · Jane Austen Societies · JASNA · JASNA-Vermont events · Literature · Publishing History · Schedule of Events

JASNA-Vermont September Meeting ~ Susan Wolfson on Northanger Abbey

September 3, 2015 BookLady DebLeave a comment

You are Cordially Invited to JASNA-Vermont’s September Meeting

at the Burlington Book Festival

“Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen’s First Novel,
before she was ‘Jane Austen.’”

with

Susan Wolfson,* Professor of English at Princeton University,
and editor of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey: An Annotated Edition**

Sunday September 27, 2015, 1:00 – 3:00 pm

Morgan Room, Aiken Hall,
83 Summit Street
Champlain College, Burlington VT***

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Sponsored by JASNA-Vermont and Bygone Books,
funded in part by a grant from the Jane Austen Society of North America.

~ Free & open to the public ~ ~ Light refreshments served ~

For more information: JASNAVTregion [at] gmail [dot] com
Please visit our blog at: http://JaneAustenInVermont.wordpress.com
Burlington Book Festival website: http://burlingtonbookfestival.com/

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*Susan Wolfson is Professor of English at Princeton University, where she is a specialist in British Romanticism, a field in which she teaches Jane Austen’s novels. She has recently produced the Harvard Annotated Northanger Abbey, a unique edition of the novel’s text that hews, with less intervention than standard editions, to the text of the 1818 publication, and as with other volumes in the Harvard series, includes page-by-page annotations, illustrations, and other supplementary materials. With her husband Ronald Levao, she has also edited Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the same series. And with her colleague Claudia L. Johnson, she edited Pride and Prejudice for Longman Cultural Editions, of which she is the General Editor, and in this capacity has supervised Emma (edited by Frances Ferguson), and Persuasion (edited by William Galperin). Her most recent book is Reading John Keats (Cambridge), about Keats as a reader as well as a writer, and about how this readerly quality shapes and stimulates how he is read (very Austenian in this way!). Susan Wolfson received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught at Rutgers University New Brunswick for 13 years, before her present appointment at Princeton. Widely published in the field of Romantic-era studies, she is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the ACLS, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

**The book will be available for purchase and signing
***Aiken Hall is located at 83 Summit Street [#36 on map]. Park on the street or in any College designated parking during the event: https://www.champlain.edu/Documents/Admissions/Undergraduate%20Admissions/Campus-Map.pdf

Hope you can join us!

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Dates for your Diary

December 6, 2015:
Annual Birthday Tea & Ball at the Essex Inn –
Celebrating 20 years of the 1995 Pride & Prejudice mini-series!
– details forthcoming
(Colin Firth is welcome if he is available and happens to be in Vermont…)

c2015, Jane Austen in Vermont

Georgian England · Great Britain - History · Jane Austen · Jane Austen Popular Culture · JASNA · JASNA-Vermont events · London · Regency England

Guest Post ~ “Encountering Jane Austen…”

July 12, 2015July 12, 2015 BookLady Deb5 Comments

My friend Suzanne is the Innkeeper at the Governor’s House in Hyde Park, Vermont, where she four times a year holds Jane Austen Weekends for those of us who like to retreat into the early 19th century for a few days. She also offers an annual In-Character Weekend, where all manner of various Austen characters people the Inn and where one must remain in character for the whole time or risk being evicted… it is all in good fun, what with archery, and fencing, and quill-making and dancing and efforts to make bonnets and turbans , one easily forgets the call of the internet or the chatter of cell phones, and as long as a resident Lady Catherine or Mr. Collins, or a grave General Tilney do not ruin the festivities, one can really get quite lost in it all. One such weekend is coming up August 7-9, 2015 and you can read all about it here: Governor’s House-JA weekends.

But I write here today about Suzanne’s and my Love of London, discovered several years ago, and about which we have yet to stop talking… We have been there together, and alas! separately, and as she was in the UK this spring without me (I am struggling to forgive her…), I here offer a post that Suzanne wrote on her Innkeeper’s blog a few weeks ago about her latest trip and the rather alarming number of encounters she had with Jane Austen! – here is the first paragraph with a link to the rest of the post … a perfect trip for armchair travelers!

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Encountering Jane Austen

After a tough Vermont winter and a serious bout of flu what form of R and R would be good before getting back to the 24/7 business of running a small inn? As is so often the case, a little Jane Austen seemed like a good plan. I’d been noticing how amazingly often JA is mentioned in whatever I’m reading, from Mr. Churchill’s Secretary to a serious article in the Economist just last week. So I wondered how many encounters there might be as I did some walking in her part of England and decided to chronicle my adventures. And all I can say now is that it is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen truly is everywhere!

Day 1

Arriving in London after an overnight flight, I immediately set out for a walk. First stop was Hatchard’s, England’s oldest bookshop founded in 1797. JA’s writings were well represented and it’s always a great place to look for guides to Regency London and places with literary ties, but the appeal for me is the list of authors who were also customers. Next stop was the National Portrait Gallery for “Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends”, John Singer Sargent’s striking portraits of Monet, Rodin, Robert Louis Stevenson and others, but certainly not JA who’d lived a century earlier. But returning the long way down from the third floor ladies, I came to this wall of JA’s contemporaries surrounding the tiny portrait of her we know so well.

Day 2… Continue reading at Suzanne’s blog here: http://www.onehundredmain.com/encountering-jane-austen/

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You can read more about the In Character Jane Austen Weekend for August 7-9, 2015 here: http://www.onehundredmain.com/events/jane-austen-weekends/ – it is not too late to sign up to give the performance of your life, Mr. Collins anyone?? and all you closet Mrs. Allens (dare I say Mrs. Norris??) can come and rave about your fashions to your heart’s content…

Showing off the Regency style turbans they made that afternoon in Hope Greenberg’s workshop

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On another note of interest to members of JASNA-Vermont – Suzanne is hosting us at the Governor’s House for an Afternoon Tea on July 26, 2015, from 2-4, where we will hear my good friend Ingrid Graff speak on “A Home of Her Own: Space and Synthesis in Sense and Sensibility.” As a member of JASNA, Suzanne is offering us this Tea at minimal cost to us, $8. / per person – reservations are required, so please email or call – invitations are being emailed later today to all on our JASNA-Vermont mailing list. Hope to see many of you there!

[Images courtesy of Suzanne B. from her Governor’s House website]

c2015 Jane Austen in Vermont

Austen Literary History & Criticism · Author Interviews · Book Giveaway · Georgian England · Great Britain - History · Jane Austen · Jane Austen Circle · JASNA-Vermont events

Book Giveaway Winner! ~ Linda Slothouber’s Jane Austen, Edward Knight, and Chawton

May 27, 2015May 27, 2015 BookLady DebLeave a comment

…and the winner is Nancy who wrote:

Quite fascinating. I am particularly interested in your comment that Edward had more land and less money than many thought then and today. I know there are those who revile Edward today for not doing more for his mother and sisters instead of praising him for what he did do. . I’d love to have a copy of that book as much for what it says about general conditions and Edward’s in particular. – I have the impression that Mr. Knightley also had more land than cash on hand and that his brother John received an allowance or something from their estate.

Nancy, please contact me as soon as possible with your contact details, and Linda will get the book sent off to you right away.

Thanks all for your terrific comments, and to Linda for her generosity for the guest post and responding to all your questions. Those of you who didn’t win, I encourage you to do it the old-fashioned way and buy the book – it is worth every penny and more of the $11.95!

And apologies for delay in announcing the giveaway – the Holiday caught me up short!

c2015 Jane Austen in Vermont

Great Britain - History · Jane Austen · Jane Austen Circle · Jane Austen Genealogy · JASNA-Vermont events · Schedule of Events · Social Life & Customs

JASNA-Vermont Gathering! ~ June 7, 2015 ~ with Kelly McDonald

May 9, 2015 BookLady Deb1 Comment

You are Cordially Invited to JASNA-Vermont’s June Meeting

“The Mystery of Emma Austen’s Aunt Emma ~ An Interactive Presentation”

with Kelly McDonald*

Sunday, 7 June 2015, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Morgan Room, Aiken Hall, 83 Summit Street
Champlain College, Burlington VT**

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Brief sentences in a series of letters lays out the basic “mystery”: the 200-year-old family secret of a highly discouraged relationship between two women. Were the quarrels based on religion, class, station, or sexual attraction? In the spirit of Sanditon or Edwin Drood, no definitive conclusion exists; the audience is invited to brainstorm as family history unfolds. The connection to Jane Austen? Emma Austen was married to Austen’s nephew and biographer James Edward Austen Leigh.

We all know Kelly McDonald as the prime mover in the founding of the Vermont JASNA region – she “retired” as co-RC when her research and publication work became her main focus. She is working on a 4-volume biography of the lives and families of Emma Smith and Mary Gosling – you can read all about them at Kelly’s blog “Two Teens in the Time of Austen”: https://smithandgosling.wordpress.com. Kelly has also published various essays in Persuasions, the monograph Jane Austen and the Arts, online articles via Academia.edu, has spoken at JASNA AGMs and will again be presenting at the 2015 AGM on Childbirth in early 19th-century England. You can read a full list of her writings here: https://smithandgosling.wordpress.com/the-author/

~ Free & open to the public ~
~ Light refreshments served ~

For more information: JASNAVTregion [at] gmail.com
Please visit our blog at: http://JaneAustenInVermont.wordpress.com

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**Aiken Hall is located at 83 Summit St – #36 on the map here: https://www.champlain.edu/Documents/Admissions/Undergraduate%20Admissions/Campus-Map.pdf
Parking is on the street or in any College designated parking during the event.

Hope you can join us!

Fashion & Costume · Georgian England · Georgian Period · Great Britain - History · Jane Austen · Jane Austen Circle · JASNA-Vermont events · Regency England

Jane Austen in Vermont ~ The Royal Navy and the Prince Regent visit Burlington

June 11, 2014June 19, 2014 BookLady Deb4 Comments

With hearty thanks to Lisa Brown for sharing her love of the Royal Navy with us Vermont Janeites, and to Marie Sprayberry for telling us of her shared-with-Jane rabid dislike of the Prince Regent and why, and displaying examples from her Georgian era royal collectibles – a most delightful day, despite the intense heat of Burlington’s heat wave and the Fletcher Free Library’s air conditioning on the fritz… [I have now successfully subjected our members and guests to one freezing December Tea where the computerized heating system refused to cooperate and we listened most intently to the two speakers, quietly shivering in our winter coats; and now the reverse of overheating the same members and guests with no air and loud fans in the skylight heated Pickering Room – as one guest bravely noted – “it was all a cost-free day in a sauna” ] – I find I have some control over these meetings, but alas! minus zero control over the weather and heating / cooling system snafus – I do apologize and thank you for your tolerance and good grace as an audience…

That said, extra kudos go to the models who courageously wore their wool-clad Royal Navy uniforms with elegance and style, as they paraded for us samples from Lisa’s wonderful collection. Here are a few pictures with descriptions of each, with thanks to our fearless models for being such good sports:

Marilyn as appropriately clad “able seaman”
[photo: c2014 M. Harrington]

Jim in the green Sharpe’s uniform of the “95th Rifles”
[see: http://www.95thrifles.com/history-95th-p1.html ]
[photo: c2014 M. Harrington]

Jess and her redcoat from the Royal Welch Fusiliers

Carole in the blue and red uniform as a “US” Navy Lieutenant during the Revolutionary War

Jay [a.k.a. Captain Wentworth] in an 1812 Royal Navy Captain’s uniform, deservedly admiring his epaulette
[see: http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/71310.html ]
[top photo c2014 M. Harrington]

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And a group shot of us all with Lisa (minus the able seaman, who had left to swab the deck), and with yours truly in the quickly donned uniform of a French Navy Lieutenant.

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Marie’s talk on the Prince Regent was cut short near the end by the heat and near fainting attendees, which was too bad as we were all quite taken with her chat on the dastardly Prince and his wicked ways – you can read the rest of her talk here in Persuasions-OnLine 33.1 (2012):

“Sex, Power, and Other People’s Money: The Prince Regent and His Impact on Jane Austen’s Life and Work” http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol33no1/sprayberry.html

“Long Live Queen Caroline!” ceramic jug (1820)
[from the collection of A. Marie Sprayberry and Edward R. Voytovich;
photo by E. Voytovich] [see the POL article for more images of Marie’s collection]

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All in all a great day, with a great audience, and a fun weekend with Marie and Lisa, here cavorting about at the incomparable Shelburne Museum… Marie (left) and Lisa (right) on a Vermont covered bridge:

Gaoled JASNA Regional Coordinators Marie and Lisa (hoping to be released in time for the Montreal AGM]

[All images c2014 by Deb Barnum, unless otherwise noted; and with special thanks to Margaret Harrington!]

c2014 Jane Austen in Vermont

Georgian Period · Great Britain - History · Jane Austen · JASNA-Vermont events · Regency England

You are Cordially Invited … the JASNA Vermont Region: All About Jane Austen and the Royal Navy, and the Dastardly Deeds of the Prince Regent!

May 22, 2014 BookLady Deb4 Comments

Our Next Meeting!

June 8, 2014

You are Cordially Invited to JASNA-Vermont’s June Meeting

A Peek into Jane Austen’s Regency World

Lisa Brown

“‘Of Rears and Vices I Saw Enough’~
The Royal Navy in Mansfield Park and Persuasion”

and A. Marie Sprayberry

“Sex, Power, and Other People’s Money ~
The Prince Regent and His Impact on Jane Austen’s Life and Work”

Sunday, 8 June 2014, 1:00 – 3:30 p.m.

Fletcher Free Library, Fletcher Room
235 College St, Burlington VT

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Lisa Brown will present an enlightening talk on how the Royal Navy figures in Mansfield Park and Persuasion. We will learn about the uniforms, the ships, the rating system, prize money, and more; as well as discover how very knowledgeable Jane Austen was about the Royal Navy because of her brothers’ involvement. Various uniforms will be on display – but, alas! without a Captain Wentworth in sight!

A. Marie Sprayberry investigates why Jane Austen wrote of the Princess of Wales in 1813: “Poor Woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman, & because I hate her Husband.” The Prince Regent brazenly personified the three themes of sex, money, and power – as long as the money was someone else’s! But did Jane Austen have particular reasons for disdaining him? And how might her views of the Prince have influenced her work? Photos of contemporary royal commemorative china and medals will illustrate the talk, all from Marie’s collection.

*Lisa and Marie are co-regional coordinators of the Syracuse Region; Lisa also co-chairs the Rochester Region, is an ECD teacher, owns a Regency era costume business, and has given various talks on the Royal Navy and Regency fashion; she works as a proof reader. Marie has spoken to JASNA on the Prince Regent and will be speaking at the Montreal AGM on “Fanny Price as Fordyce’s Ideal Woman?” She works from her Syracuse home for a NYC-based publisher.

Free & open to the public ~ Light refreshments served

You can see the event flyer here: June 2014 flyer

Hope you can join us!

c2014, Jane Austen in Vermont

Auctions · Decorative Arts · Georgian England · Jane Austen · JASNA-Vermont events · Regency England · Social Life & Customs

Tea Anyone? ~ Georgian Period Tea Caddies at Auction at Sworders

July 12, 2013 BookLady DebLeave a comment

I have Tea on the brain because our JASNA-Vermont group is planning a Regency-style Afternoon Tea at The Governor’s House in Hyde Park on July 24th, 2013 [$25. / person, reservations required]

And so, Tea being on my radar [where it always is really…], I find there are a number of tea caddies up for auction at Sworders, Fine Art Auctioneers.

These are particularly lovely: [Lot 69]

A pair of George III oval papier mâché tea caddies

Birmingham, c.1780, by Henry Clay, the first with a hinged lid decorated with bands of berried leaves and anthemia centred by a hallmarked silver loop handle stamped with the initials ‘HC’, the body with transfer decorated scenes of Demeter in the House of Kelos together with other classical figures, instruments and a painted chevron band, the second similarly decorated, but with palmette borders, 11cm high Provenance: By repute the Earls of Jersey, Osterley Park Middlesex, sold 1949. Literature: For a similar single caddy, ‘The Robert Harman Collection’, Sotheby’s, 12 November 1999, lot 6. The silver loop handle carries the hallmark of Henry Clay, ‘Japanner in Ordinary to His Majesty and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales’. Clay specialised in Etruscan-style decoration of this kind. A visitor to his workshop in Covent Garden in 1775 reported that he made boxes, tea caddies, panels for coaches and sedan chairs, coffee trays and ‘…all kinds of other vessels, black with orange figures in the style of Etruscan vases’ (‘George Christoph Lichtenberg’s Visits to England as described in his Letters and Diaries’, translated and annotated by M L Mare and W H Quarrell, Oxford, 1938).

Estimate: £5000 – £8000

Or this: [Lot 60]

A George III tea caddy

of rectangular form with canted corners, the lid in harewood (?) with an inlaid oval patera within strung borders, the front panel in mahogany similarly decorated, the canted corners inlaid with plain shaded columns on a stained ground, 11.5cm high.

Estimate: £500 – £800

You can view these here, and see the other 25 or so other tea caddies for sale here.

[Image and text from Sworders – Fine Art Auctioneers – Summer House Country Sale, 16 July 2013]

And on the subject of Tea, here are some offers from Twinings: [with thanks to Tony Grant for sending the link!]

c2013 Jane Austen in Vermont

Jane Austen · JASNA-Vermont events · Regency England

A Sunday in Vermont with Jane Austen

June 6, 2013June 6, 2013 BookLady DebLeave a comment

Just a reblog here of a piece written by one of the attendees at our JASNA-Vermont Sunday event with JASNA News editor Sheryl Craig on the economics in Pride and Prejudice – Joe Trenn of The Book Shed in Benson, VT wrote the following for the blog of the Vermont Antiquarian Booksellers Association:

One of the more satisfying regular events on the calendar for northeastern literary seekers is the quarterly meeting of JASNA-Vermont, the Vermont region of the Jane Austen Society of North America. Organized and chaired by self-titled “Janeite” Deb the alter ego of Bygone Books owner Deborah Barnum and the Regional Coordinator of JASNA-Vermont, the meetings feature a talk on some aspect of Austen by an expert from academia or the wide, passionate world of Austen fandom. Before and after the talk there is a social gathering fueled by delicious scones and other delights prepared by Janeite Marcia Merrill and her volunteer bakers.

the Workhouse, St. James’s Parish, from The Microcosm of London (1810)
[image: Wikipedia Commons]

Austen Literary History & Criticism · Great Britain - History · Jane Austen · Jane Austen Societies · JASNA · JASNA-Vermont events · Regency England · Social Life & Customs

Please Join Us! ~ JASNA-Vermont Meeting – June 2, 2013 ~ Trickle-Down Economics in Pride and Prejudice, with Sheryl Craig

May 5, 2013 BookLady Deb4 Comments

You are Cordially Invited to JASNA-Vermont’s June Meeting

“Trickle-Down Economics in Pride and Prejudice;
Or, Why ‘Mr. Darcy Improves upon Acquaintance’!”

with Sheryl Craig*

What Jane Austen’s first readers did not need to be told was that a man named Fitzwilliam Darcy had to be a moderate Whig, one who supported Tory Prime Minister William Pitt’s tax and Poor Law reform proposals, and that Darcy’s home county, Derbyshire, paid high wages, provided generous welfare benefits, and funded the best system of poor houses in England. Thus, Darcy, and moderate Whigs like him, were worthy of both Elizabeth Bennet’s and the reader’s esteem and served as role models to be emulated throughout Georgian Britain and, as it turns out, throughout time.

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Sunday, 2 June 2013, 2 – 4 p.m.

Champlain College, Hauke Conference Center,
375 Maple St Burlington VT

~Free & open to the Public~
~Light refreshments served~

For more information: JASNAVermont [at] gmail [dot] com
Please visit our blog at: http://JaneAustenInVermont.wordpress.com

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* Sheryl Craig has published articles in Jane Austen’s Regency World, Persuasions, Persuasions On-Line, and The Explicator. She has also written film reviews for the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. Sheryl was JASNA’s International Visitor in 2008, is the editor of JASNA News, and was JASNA’s Traveling Lecturer for the Central region in 2012. She has a Ph.D. in Nineteenth-century British literature from the University of Kansas, has taught at the University of Central Missouri for over twenty years, and is a life member of JASNA.