From the SunLive website: New Zealand is a tad far, so had to share this with you ….
Two damaged books destined for the recycling bin have been given a glamorous new life as a Jane Austen inspired frock.
The Tauranga Library promotions assistant Katherine Tham created the eye-catching display currently on show in the city library’s window, in collaboration with the Tauranga Art Gallery to promote their latest exhibition, A La Mode.
*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
* A bookseller’s list of some of his works that they have for sale [Tavistock Books]: http://tinyurl.com/7c2t2y3
* 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:
*There is also the Dickens Exhibition at The Morgan Library. Here is the online component you can visit without leaving home: you can view 20 pages of A Christmas Carol and read a letter penned by Dickens…
February 26, 2012 at 9pm (Check local listings) The Old Curiosity Shop One 90-minute episode
A teenage girl and her grandfather lose everything to a maniacal moneylender and flee his relentless pursuit. Derek Jacobi (I, Claudius) stars as Grandfather, with Sophie Vavasseur (Northanger Abbey) as Nell and Toby Jones (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) as Quilp.
Gillian Anderson - Great Expectations
April 1 & 8, 2012 Great Expectations
Gillian Anderson, David Suchet and Ray Winstone star in this new adaptation of Great Expectations, widely considered one of the greatest novels by Charles Dickens. Great Expectationsfollows orphan boy Pip as he rises from an apprentice to a gentleman.
Masterpiece - Edwin Drood
April 15, 2012 The Mystery of Edwin Drood The Mystery Of Edwin Drood is a psychological thriller about a provincial choirmaster’s obsession with 17-year-old Rosa Bud and the lengths he will go to attain her. The cast includes Matthew Rhys (Brothers & Sisters) and Julia MacKenzie (Miss Marple).
I am currently reading Bleak House, one of those books on my TBR pile literally for the past 40 years! I have signed up for a four-session class on “Dickens and the Law” and figure I should be at least somewhat up to speed on Jarndyce and Jarndyce! – What better gift to an author than this – reading and re-reading their works 200 years after they were born! Anyone else reading Dickens this year of his bicentennial? Please share!
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.
See this Publishers Weekly blog and their list of their “Top 10 Favorite Book Covers for 2011” – A Jane Austen Education comes in at number 8:
8. A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz (Penguin Press)
“The formality of Austen’s novels is contrasted by the cartoonish style and informality of an outfit (and personality) being simply applied adhesively.”
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The photograph of the month at the National Portrait Gallery [UK] is Colin Firth – and on exhibit through December:
Colin Firth by Jillian Edelstein from the NPG Website.
Eight internationally acclaimed authors have invented imaginary biographies and character sketches based on fourteen unidentified portraits. Who are these men and women, why were they painted, and why do they now find themselves in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery? With fictional letters, diaries, mini-biographies and memoirs, Imagined Lives creates vivid stories about these unknown sitters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
For your iphone, ipad and such: Ebook Treasures: We already know that Austen’s History of England is available from the British Library, but look at this, a 14th Century Cookbook:
“The Forme of Cury is the oldest surviving cookbook in the world, dating from the late 14th century. Originally made by the cooks of the court of Richard II, very few copies survive, and this one, from the John Rylands Library in Manchester, is probably the best and earliest. Written in Middle English, the script can be hard to interpret, and some of the recipes unfamiliar. The book gives an incredible insight into medieval kitchens, as well as medieval life itself. The book contains one hundred and ninety-four recipes which reveal the amazing variety and elaboration of the dishes available to the elite, including stews, roast dishes, jellies, tarts and custards. Among the recipes are ‘Chyckens in gravey’, ‘Blank manger’ (a white savory stew, from which the word ‘blancmange’ derives),‘Furmente with porpays’ (porpoise in wheat porridge), and ‘Crypses’ (fried pastries).
The manuscript is still in a very worn, and possibly original, binding and it may well have been used as a practical cookery book in an aristocratic or royal kitchen. However, unlike modern recipe books, the Forme of Cury doesn’t give exact quantities or cooking times, so a lot is left to the skill and imagination of the cook.
This iBook contains the complete manuscript along with transcriptions from the Middle English. iTunes £3.99 ” [from the website]___________________________________
Michael Dirda of the Washington Post reviews Death Comes to Pemberley – this is on the top of my TBR pile…
For those non-vegetarians out there with an interest in the Meat of London, here is a tasty read [and perhaps an unsettling one?]:
Meat, Commerce and the City: The London Food Market, 1800–1855 by Robyn Metcalfe – all you ever wanted to know about the Smithfield Meat Market, due out in March 2012 from Pickering & Chatto.
[image from Victorian London.org]
Tides of War, by Stella Tillyard
An epic novel about love and war, set in Regency England and Spain during the Peninsular War (1812-15), by the acclaimed historian and bestselling author of “Aristocrats.” Tides of War opens in England with the recently married, charmingly unconventional Harriet preparing to say goodbye to her husband, James, as he leaves to join the Duke of Wellington’s troops in Spain….
A book about the plague, Ralph Tailor’s Summer by Keith Wrightson – visit the publisher Yale Books where you can read a fascinating extract from the preface.
Charles Dickens is getting a good number of exhibitions all over in celebration of his 200th birthday: you can check the various happenings at the Dickens 2012 website.
*There is also the Dickens Exhibition at The Morgan Library. Here is the online component you can visit without leaving home: you can view 20 pages of A Christmas Carol and read a letter penned by Dickens…
Organized to complement the Center’s major exhibition on Johan Zoffany, who spent six productive years in India, Adapting the Eye explores the complex and multifaceted networks of British and Indian professional and amateur artists, patrons, and scholars in British India in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and their drive to create and organize knowledge for both aesthetic and political purposes. Selected from the Center’s rich holdings, the exhibition includes a diverse range of objects from both high art and popular culture, including albums, scrapbooks, prints, paintings, miniatures, and sculpture, demonstrating how collecting practices and artistic patronage in India during that period constituted a complex intersection of culture and power.
Auction News
At auction this coming week: Bonham’s Fine Books and manuscripts, December 15, 2011:
Lot No: 5159WALKER, MRS. ALEXANDER.Female Beauty, as Preserved and Improved by Regimen, Cleanliness and Dress. London: Thomas Hurst, 1837.
8vo (183 x 107mm). With 11 lithographed illustrations, 10 hand-colored, each with hand-colored overlay, showing how physical characteristics (thick waist, broad jaws, short limbs, etc.) can be camouflaged in order to enhance one’s appearance. Later morocco by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, spine gilt, a.e.g. Custom slipcase. Some staining to spine, minor foxing throughout, offset from plates. Estimate: US$500 – 700.
And more of Mr. Dickens! Lot No: 5177: DICKENS, CHARLES. 1812-1870.
A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. London: Chapman & Hall, 1843.
8vo. [viii], 166, [2] ad pp. Hand-colored engraved frontispiece and 3 hand-colored plates. Original cloth blindstamped and gilt, a.e.g. Custom morocco pull-off case by Scroll Club Bindery. Pp 64-70 lightly foxed, binding slightly cocked and faded.
Provenance: Jerome Kern (morocco book label); Frank Brewer Bemis [1861-1935],Bostoncollector, whose collection was dispersed by Rosenbach and Goodspeed (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION, THE KERN-BEMIS COPY. Second issue of the text, with “Stave One” on page [1], title page in red and blue dated 1843, and yellow endpapers, but first state of the binding (the closest interval between blindstamped border and gilt holly wreath being 14-15 mm not 12 mm, and the upper left serif of D intact). Todd calls this binding point a “desideratum … encompassing all the others,” and of greater importance in priority than the textual points (The Book Collector, 1961, pp 449-454). Eckel, p 116; Sadleir 684. Estimate: US$4,000 – 6,000.
Lot No: 5284 : GEORGE III. 1738-1820.
Document Signed (“George R.”), 1 p (with conjoined docketed blank), folio, St. James’s, May 25, 1781, being a pay warrant for General Henry Seymour Conway for the Royal Horse Guards for the year 1779, additionally signed by CHARLES JENKINSON, Earl of Liverpool, toned, tape stains at upper and lower right corners, small chips at edges, matted and framed.
Provenance: with Thomas F. Madigan,New Yorkautograph dealer (signed letter of authenticity, October 26, 1935). Estimate: US$800 – 1,200.
Prices Realized at Auction:
Mr. Dickens yet again!: A complete set in fine bindings of the first editions of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Books. Five volumes, uniformly bound, London, 1843-1848. Includes A Christmas Carol. Sold for $6,480. [Swann]
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Dance Card for the Union Ball in Honor of the Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, $3,840 at Swann Galleries of New York on December 1.
A dance card issued to the guests atLincoln’s inaugural ball in 1861. Courtesy of Swann Galleries.These cards, with die-cut decorative border and a ribbon through one corner, were issued to guests at the inauguration ball inWashington,D.C.on March 4, 1861. On the second of the four pages are listed the twenty-three planned dances that will take place to the music provided by L. F. Weber’s band, while on the third is space to write in one’s partner for each dance. On the rear panel are printed the names of Lincoln and his vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, around an illustration of a bald eagle, captioned “The Constitution.” [Invitations to the ball appear from time to time and sell for upwards of $8,000, but Swann could find no previous record of a dance card at auction.]
If you are into hair collecting [a little late for our Regency tastes, but what good Victorianist is not into hair…], here is a short essay on the topic at Paul Fraser Collectibles.
And then you might like to add this to your collection: Lord Nelson’s hair for £49.95, or Napoleon, and the Duke of Wellingon, all the same price – also Dickens and Steinbeck and Paul McCartney, etc – but alas! – no Jane Austen!
And this is way too much fun to look at – The Love Diagrams of Jane Austenat Diana Peterfreund’s website: [visit her site for diagrams of the other novels]
And finally, this is all over the airwaves, and we will have to wait until December 16th for it all to be unveiled, but visit the website of The Austen Games.com to whet your appetite and ponder.…
*Lindsay Ashford on her new book The Mysterious Death of Miss Austen – and how Austen perhaps died from arsenic poisoning, whether intentional or not – has created quite the kerfuffle on the airwaves. Miss Ashford has written a fictional account of what might have happened [and it certainly reveals a good number of Austen family secrets! – all fiction of course…or is it?]
[I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Ashford at the Fort Worth AGM – I’ve also read the book! – more on this in a future post I hope… has anyone else read it? – it deserves some conversation!]
*Those who have been following Downton Abbey [and who in their right costume-drama mind is not] will be pleased to know that the series has been granted a third season! – meanwhile we on this side of the pond “patiently” wait until January for Series 2, now finished in the UK – watch your PBS station for details on the re-running of Season 1 prior to the new shows – [do I dare admit that at our WWW (Wild Women Weekend) we watched the entire first season straight through [well, parts 5 and 6 on the Sunday morning – is there anything better than sharing this show with your very own group of fabulous wild women?!]
The JASNA website has added its annual link to Austen-related gifts from various JASNA Regions here: http://jasna.org/merchandise/index.html – a great place to start your holiday shopping, even for those not so Austen-crazed – what a better time than this to convert a few friends…
Humor is the key ingredient in this slick debut by television comedy writer Levine. Freelancer Jaine Austen (her mother loved the classics but couldn’t spell) makes a living writing love letters, personal ads and industrial brochures, but she never expected her work to involve her in murder.
FB&C asks: Have any FB&C readers attempted to collect all known editions and translations of Austen’s debut title? Does anyone know of any individual or institution that may have made such an attempt…?
* A new book with a great title: Freud’s Couch, Scott’s Buttocks, Bronte’s Grave by Simon Goldhill. There are chapters on traveling to the homes and haunts of Shakespeare, Bronte, Wordsworth, Scott, and Freud, but alas! no Austen – what was Mr. Goldhill thinking?!: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo10997683.html
And while we are on Mr. Holmes, visit the website for the Sherlock Holmes Society of London: http://www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk/ – where you can order your Christmas cards for 2011 complete with Holmes and Watson in the “Blue Carbuncle”…
This all in preparation for the second installment in the Holmes / Watson – Downey / Law due out it is said on of all days, December 16th! Would Jane Austen like Sherlock Holmes?? what do you think??
Harvard recently published the annotated editions of Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion – Emma, NA, MP, and S&S are forthcoming. Note that our esteemed Austenblog and Jane Austen’s World blog are both included in the resource list! Congratulations to Mags and Vic!
*One can never have enough of London, as Samuel Johnson so wisely opined – so here is yet another site to visit to satisfy your London wanderlust: the online exhibition Glimpses of London’s Past at the University of Otago: http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/exhibitions/london/index.html
*An oldie but worth a listen: Claire Tomalin on Jane Austen at TTBOOK.org: http://ttbook.org/book/claire-tomalin-jane-austen
[TTBOOOK = To the Best of Our Knowledge – check out the various interview podcasts…]
*Old Print Giclees – reproducing prints of all sorts – here is a Gibson print – you can own your own [and very affordable], either on paper or canvas in any size – check out the website for other print selections on various subjects: http://old-print-giclees.com/?wpsc_product_category=gibsonbook
The First Ladies explores the unofficial but important position of first lady and the ways that different women have shaped the role to make their own contributions to the presidential administrations and the nation. The exhibition features more than two dozen gowns from the Smithsonian’s almost 100-year old First Ladies Collection, including those worn by Frances Cleveland, Lou Hoover, Jacqueline Kennedy, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama. A section titled “Changing Times, Changing First Ladies” highlights the roles played by Dolley Madison, Mary Lincoln, Edith Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson and their contributions to their husband’s administrations. The First Ladies encourages visitors to consider the changing role played by the first lady and American women over the past 200 years.
*Begin your holiday gift giving by sending all your friends this Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar – London again! http://www.jacquielawson.com/advent/london [click this link not the picture for the demo]
For those who did not go to the AGM [and for those who did because the sound was flawed] – here is the video previewing the upcoming AGM in New York City next October [via Kerri]: http://jasna.org/agms/newyork/video/
“The Making of a Homemaker” – a Smithsonian Institution online exhibition about the domestic guidebooks written for the 19th century American housewife: many images
Image: Mrs. Lydia Green Abell. The Skillful Housewife’s Book: or Complete Guide to Domestic Cookery, Taste, Comfort and Economy. New York: R. T. Young, 1853.
Articles of Interest
Gemmill, Katie. “Jane Austen as Editor: Letters on Fiction and the Cancelled Chapters of Persuasion.” ECF 24.1 (2011): 105-122
Persuasion, An Annotated Edition, edited by Robert Morrison [in the same series as the Annotated Pride and Prejudice edited by Patricia Myers Spacks] – http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=31301
I think I might weigh in after reading it myself – I thoroughly enjoyed the Hodge biography…
If you have read Bill Bryson’s At Home and Amanda Vickery’s Behind Closed Doors [and etc. regarding her titles] – and need another fix for your domestic matters obsessions, here is a must-have: If Walls Could Talk by Lucy Worsley [image US and UK cover: note that it is not available in the US until 2/2012 and has a different cover] – Ms. Worsley recently aired her Elegance and Decadence, The Age of the Regency on BBC4, also not available here until when ?? [though it is available for streaming, on youtube, etc.] [makes one want to abandon the colonies for good and head to the mothership?]
“Britain leaves us awed by ancient castles, ruins and museums. History pours out a legacy of battles, a developing monarchy, a structured class system, court-inspired behaviors and fashions, artwork and writings that have created an international hoard of Anglophiles. From among them have come forth those who feel that they must fuel the fire. Welcome to the happy home of English Period Authors. We have come together to share, inspire and celebrate and to reach out to our cherished readers.”
“What links Jane Austen, John Nash, Humphry Repton and Blaise Hamlet?” at the Georgian Gentleman blog:
Thrifty Jane blog – interviews with various Austen characters, esp the “thrifty” sort! [i.e. Mrs. Norris, Lucy Steele, Lady C, etc…] http://thriftyjane.wordpress.com/
Any interest in English Handwriting?? – here is an amazing online course for free – makes me want to dig out my old calligraphy pens and settle in for a winter class!:
Caravaggio and His Followers in Rome: this exhibit was at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, but I was unfortunately unable to go – Laurel Ann at Austenprose did see it on the Sunday as she was leaving later than me – she said I must buy the book, so here you go, another lovely art book to peruse: http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300170726
DESCRIPTION: Have you ever read a mystery where the heroine sounds like
an oversexed gangster? Or a romance where the hero sounds more like a
girlfriend than a man? Chances are, the oversexed heroine was created by
a male author; the tender, emotional hero by a woman. Men and women
think, act, and talk differently – which causes problems for writers
who are trying to create characters of the opposite sex. Learn about the
most common gender differences, and use them to create believable
characters of the opposite sex. (And along the way, you may get some
great ideas about how to deal with your husband, boyfriend, boss, big
brother, or other assorted males — or for the first time, understand
what’s really going on inside the head of your wife, girlfriend, mom…)
Fee: $20 CRW Members; $25 Non-CRW Members. FMI about the workshops or
speakers, or to register: http://crw-rwa.ning.com
Sage and other variants were very fashionable during the Regency period as a green dye that did not fade or darken was invented. However, it was literaly the colour to die for – the pigment contained a poisonous copper arsenic compound!
Plum is a much nicer word than ‘Puce’, which was popular in the Regency period. The purplish pink shade was named after the French word for ‘Flea’ as it resembled the shade of the blood sucking insect after a meal. Yuck!
Teal and shades of blue were also in demand. In Jane Austen’s time dyes were expensive, pigments made of natural substances and the resulting hues rather muted compared to our modern artificial dyes, hence this lovely soft shade of teal would have been considered as being quite bright!
[from the Jane Austen Centre website]
[sage, plum and teal being my favorite colors – I knew I was born in the wrong century!]
For Fun
A joke on twitter – Victorian London:
“Why are a chimney sweep and a bugler good partners at cards?
One can follow soot, the other can trumpet.” joke, 1884
Indie Jane blog – a pen-pal project – alas! missed the dealine – hopefully they will do it again! fabulous idea in this world of the lost art of the letter – http://indiejane.org/2011/08/dear-jane/
A Musicologist Abroad blog by Vassar Professor Kathryn L. Libin: a few posts on Chawton http://blogs.vassar.edu/musicologistabroad/ . Prof. Libin is writing a book about Jane Austen and music. [from JASNA News]
Masterpiece Mystery: Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories starring Jason Isaacs as her Jackson Brodie begins on October 16th – see the upcoming schedule for all shows here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/schedule/index.html
A quick look through one of the finds by a C18 listserv member: from George Washington’s Household Account Book 1793-1797: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20085390
Pd to Chas. Kirkham for 18 pr. of gloves for Mrs. W. ……. 5.50
[18 pair of gloves!!]
Martha Washington
[Image: freerepublic.com]
But enough frivolity – back to JSTOR: go to the main search screen and type in “Jane Austen” – 329 items come up – here is one example, a spot-on early 20th century review of Austen’s writings [though the author does do that “Bennett” misspelling thing!]
[tip on using JSTOR: go to the search results citation page and choose the “view pdf” option – the whole document comes up vs. having to scroll through each page; you can also do this from the search page]
*PD James – I wondered when she was going to get around to combining her love of Austen with a sure-to-be-great Austen-inspired mystery! – watch for Death Comes to Pemberley, due this November [you can pre-order online]: http://www.faber.co.uk/article/2011/9/death-comes-pemberley-announcement/
[if you have never read James’s “Emma Considered as a Detective Story” – you must find a copy immediately (the text is included as an appendix in her autobiography Time to Be in Earnest)]
*Samuel Park’s debut novel This Burns My Heart is written from the point of view of women in post-war South Korea – he explains this writing of women’s lives:
“I’ve spent my entire life deeply embroiled in the fantasies, desires and frustrations of my mother and my two older sisters. Their lives were so fascinating — they would spend hours talking about a crush. Not by coincidence, after I left them to go to college, I spent all my time in the library reading Jane Austen.
Museum Musings ~ Exhibition Trekking
*At the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge [UK], a new exhibit on Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence: the title just smacks of Sense and Sensibility, doesn’t it?! And for those of us who have heard former JASNA president Marsha Huff give her talk on Austen and Vermeer, this book looks like a must-have – too bad the exhibition is only to be at the Fitzwilliam – it is sure to have Vermeers we have never seen.
[image from the book: LePrince, Xavier. Inconvéniens d’un Voyage en Diligence. Douze Tableaux, Lithographiés par…Paris: Chez Gihaut Freres… et Sazerac et Duval, 1826]
Vermont as you know suffered unfathomable damage from the winds and rain of Irene. We were largely spared here in the Burlington area, but other parts of the state were hammered – you have seen the many pictures on the national news of flooding, senseless deaths, extensive property damage to homes and businesses and farms, covered bridges falling into the rivers – it has been a nightmare – but now the big concern is that the greater world thinks that Vermont is “boarded up” so to speak – not a place to visit this fall, that season that brings the annual leaf-peepers to our lovely state – so I take a minute here to give a shout-out for the State of Vermont – We Are Open for Business! – road crews have been working non-stop to get roads and towns back into shape – so if you want to help out in any way, hop in your car [or plane or train or bike] and come for a visit, go to the restaurants and eat local, shop in the stores (buy books from the local bookshops!), walk in the woods, hike the mountains – it is all here, just as before, and we are waiting with open arms!
You can visit this website for information on I am Vermont Strong: http://www.iamvermontstrong.com/ where you can buy a t-shirt to help the recovery! – and a fine example of social networking sites making a difference:
Our very own Burlington Country Dancers ~ their Fall schedule:
Elley-Long Music Center, 223 Ethan Allen Avenue, Colchester,VT
First and Third Fridays (Sept. thru May) w/ LIVE MUSIC
7pm – 7:30pm Session for more experienced dancers – $1
7:30pm – 9:30pm Dancing for all – $8 ($5 student/under 30)
2011 DATES (All Fridays):
Sept. 16 ~ Impropriety (Lar Duggan, McKinley James, Laura Markowitz, Ana Ruesink)
Oct. 7 ~ Old Stage Road (Carol Compton, Albert Joy, Margaret Smith)
Oct. 21 ~ Lar Duggan, Dominique Gagne, Peter MacFarlane
Nov. 4 ~ Aaron Marcus, McKinley James, Laura Markowitz, Ana Ruesink
Nov. 18 ~ DANCE PARTY with Guest Teacher Tom Amesse (from NYC) and with Frost & Fire (Hollis Easter, Viveka Fox, Aaron Marcus)
Dec. 2 ~ Old Stage Road (Carol Compton, Albert Joy, Margaret Smith)
Dec. 16 ~ Aaron Marcus, McKinley James, Laura Markowitz, Ana Ruesink
~ All dances taught & walked through by Wendy Gilchrist, Martha Kent, Val Medve ~ Casual dress ~ Please bring a sweet or savory ‘finger food’ snack ~ We change partners frequently throughout the evening, so there’s no need to bring your own partner (a Mr. Darcy might be lurking, or is that a Mr. Knightley without a partner?…)
And save the date for the next Across the Lake weekend event: June 8-10, 2012
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UVM’s OLLI Program: English Country Dancing in Jane Austen’s World Instructor: Judy Chaves
Date: Mondays, October 24, 31, November 7 and 14
Time: 5:30-7pm
Location: Ira Allen Chapel (October 31 in Waterman Lounge) at UVM
Price: Members – $60 / Non-members – $85
Do you enjoy 19th-century British literature? If you’ve ever read any of Jane Austen’s novels or seen any of the recent film adaptations, you know that English country dance plays a prominent role in the culture of the time. The forerunner of American contra dance, English country dance is done in two facing lines (sometimes in squares, less often in circles) and requires no more than a knowledge of left from right and the ability and willingness to move to simply wonderful music. Through a combination of lecture (not much) and dance (as much as we can), you’ll learn the basics of the dance, gain an insider’s appreciation of the vital role it played in the lives of Austen’s characters, understand the etiquette and logistics underpinning Austen’s dance scenes–and have a great deal of fun in the process. You may come by yourself or as a couple!
A Jane Austen Lecture: Norwich Public Library, November 2, 2011, 7pm
In Want of a Wife: Romance and Realism in Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen is considered a realist of social relations – and yet, Pride and Prejudice incorporates an element of the fairy tale: it fulfills the wishes of its poor and not conspicuously beautiful heroine. Dartmouth Professor Emeritus James Heffernan examines how Jane Austen does it.
[Part of the Vermont Humanities Council 1st Wednesdays program] – visit here for more information on this and other events: http://www.vermonthumanities.org/
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News & Gossip ~ JASNA style:
The AGM in Fort Worth is only a week and half away! [and alas! I am without proper attire! – though my jeans and cowgirl boots are at the ready!] – check out the meeting link at JASNA website for the schedule and latest news: http://jasna.org/agms/fortworth/index.html
But even if your attire may not be quite proper, you can improve your mind by extensive reading: – here is the JASNA reading list for Sense and Sensibility [most available online]: http://jasna.org/agms/news-articles/about-ss-reading.html
This new fourth edition incorporates the findings of recent scholarship to further enrich our understanding of Austen and give us the fullest and most revealing view yet of her life and family. In addition, Le Faye has written a new preface, has amended and updated the biographical and topographical indexes, has introduced a new subject index, and had added the contents of the notes to the general index. [from the Oxford UP website]
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY by Jane Austen; with illustrations by Niroot Puttapipat (11 colour and 21 b&w silhouettes); Palazzo Editions: September 2011; £20
A one-stop book review search at Owl Canyon Press, where you can search various book review sources in one single search – brilliant! http://owlcanyonpress.com/reviewsources.htm
In 1998, inspired by close acquaintance with two antique gilded harps, I decided to compose a work in a style that would remind them of their younger days! To think myself into a thoroughly Regency frame of mind I played through antique music books until I was so immersed in the style of the period that I could close the books and continue playing in the same vein without any anachronistic intrusions. The books were a leather-bound volume of popular piano salon pieces by long-forgotten composers, written out in a neat copperplate ink script: “The Manuscript Books of Mary Heberden, Datchett Lodge, 1819 & 1826” and a similar collection of harp pieces compiled by one Eliza Euphrosina Saris at about the same time. By these means I hope to have produced music of the kind which Jane Austen might have imagined her fictional heroines playing, the sort of music that all well-bred young Regency ladies would have wanted to perform before an admiring audience, no doubt silhouetted with their harps before the French windows, making the most of the opportunity to display their slender fingers upon the strings and their delicate ankles as they moved the pedals. (Paul Lewis)
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Museum Trekking:
Bath Preservation Trust: the website links on No. 1 Royal Crescent: The Whole Story Project – some great images here:
and through October 30, there is a Jane Austen exhibition: Putting Pen to Paper:
This special temporary exhibition brought to you from the Bath Preservation Trust includes a rare set of Jane Austen’s first editions on loan from a private collection. Visitors to this inspirational exhibition can learn more about the life of Jane’s novels as the story reveals the craftsmanship of book production in the 18th century and the importance of reading in Jane Austen’s Bath.
This exhibition will be the first opportunity to see a complete collection of Jane Austen’s first editions in Bath. These treasures will be exhibited alongside tools used in the book binding process. Stamps and rollers will show the exquisite designs used by gilders to create the perfect library for their clients. Beautifully coloured illustrations from later editions will highlight Jane’s narrative, defining her characteristic hallmark of accuracy and attention to detail.
And here is a book I just discovered: My Brother and I, a Jane Austen Sequel from a Completely Different Viewpoint [i.e. Edward Benton the farrier’s apprentice, employed at Pemberley], by Cornelis de Jong – go here for more info http://sites.google.com/site/corneliswriter/ [this one I might send to my kindle…]
For fun:
With thanks to the always interesting Two Nerdy History Girls: take a few moments to watch both these very funny videos from the BBC– a spoof of Downton Abbey “Uptown Downstairs Abbey” and almost as good as the real thing! – these will just have to do until we here in the US “patiently” wait for the real season 2 next year : http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-time-again-for-downton-abbey-silly.html
[and watch out for Kim Cattrall hiding behind her dark locks and the perpetually falling butler!]
-The Austenesque Extravaganza continues on a daily basis at the Austenesque Reviews blog – stop by to participate in the fun and comment to win the various giveaways ! through August: http://janeaustenreviews.blogspot.com/
-But do not completely despair: we do have this on BBC America – The Hour -a six-week series – I loved the first one aired this past week [wednesday night at 10 here in Vermont] – it is peopled with Austen “graduates”: Juliet Stevenson [the perfect Austen narrator], Anna Chancelor[Miss Bingley in 1995, following her role as “Duckface” in Four Weddings and a Funeral [Hugh Grant], and Romola Garai, the latest “Emma’ … http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/444/index.jsp
-The Frances Burney Society invites submissions for the Hemlow Prize in Burney Studies,
… named in honour of the late Joyce Hemlow, whose biography of Frances Burney and edition of her journals and letters are among the foundational works of eighteenth-century literary scholarship. The Hemlow Prize will be awarded to the best essay written by a graduate student on any aspect of the life or writings of Frances Burney or members of the Burney Family. The essay, which can be up to 6,000 words, should make a substantial contribution to Burney scholarship. The Prize will be awarded in October 2011. Submissions must be received by September 1, 2011.
-The JASNA-Vermont September meeting, when we will be hosting JASNA president Iris Lutz, will be once again part of the Burlington Book Festival: http://burlingtonbookfestival.com/ Iris will be presenting her talk “ ‘in proportion to their family and income’: Houses in Jane Austen’s Life and Fiction.” Join us if you can [more information forthcoming]
-Prinny’s Tailor: a blog by Charles Bazalgette about his ‘many greats’ grandfather Louis Bazalgette who was tailor to the Prince Regent for 32 years. This blog follows his research – the book is due out next year: http://chasbaz.posterous.com/
–Robert Rodi of Bitch in a Bonnet:Reclaiming Jane Austen from the stiffs, the snobs, the simps and the saps seems to be back in full swing blogging about his take on Mansfield Park: visit if you can and see Fanny redeemed! – http://bitchinabonnet.blogspot.com/
-The Twelfth Enchantment, by David Liss: this one I could not resist ordering and it arrived today in my mailbox! – will let you know how it fares…
Lucy Derrick is a young woman of good breeding and poor finances. After the death of her beloved father, she is forced to maintain a shabby dignity as the unwanted boarder of her tyrannical uncle, fending off marriage to a local mill owner. But just as she is on the cusp of accepting a life of misery, events take a stunning turn when a handsome stranger—the poet and notorious rake Lord Byron—arrives at her house, stricken by what seems to be a curse, and with a cryptic message for Lucy. Suddenly her unfortunate circumstances are transformed in ways at once astonishing and seemingly impossible.
With the world undergoing an industrial transformation, and with Englandon the cusp of revolution, Lucy is drawn into a dangerous conspiracy in which her life, and her country’s future, are in the balance. Inexplicably finding herself at the center of cataclysmic events, Lucy is awakened to a world once unknown to her: where magic and mortals collide, and the forces of ancient nature and modern progress are at war for the soul of England. . . and the world. The key to victory may be connected to a cryptic volume whose powers of enchantment are unbounded.
Now, challenged by ruthless enemies with ancient powers at their command, Lucy must harness newfound mystical skills to prevent catastrophe and preserve humanity’s future. And enthralled by two exceptional men with designs on her heart, she must master her own desires to claim the destiny she deserves.
What is it about this time and place that compelled you to use it as the background for your story?
There are a number of factors that drew me here. For a long time I’ve wanted to write a novel that was in communication with Jane Austen, but which deal with the economic and political issues that are absent, or at least at the margins of, her novels — the war with France, a series of devastating harvests resulting in food shortages and grain riots, an on-going economic recession, and, most importantly, changes in the labor market brought on by the industrial revolution. This novel incorporates elements of the supernatural — specifically folk and scholarly magic as actually practiced by people who actually believed it worked — and there’s really no better time to write about such beliefs since the early industrial revolution was a period of profound change. I wanted to write about a world that was on the verge of a major alteration, and England, at the beginning of industrialization and before the end of the Napoleonic Wars, works perfectly.
[I’m adding this because I like this answer!] If you could meet just one historical figure, who would it be?
I have a great deal of affection for Henry Fielding, who helped pioneer the novel and the modern police force, was a brilliant legal mind, a wide-ranging intellectual, and a guy who could hang out and enjoy several bottles of wine (yes, several bottles!) while chatting with his friends. My kind of guy.
-A book review of Revolutionary Imaginings in the 1790s: Charlotte Smith, Mary Robinson, Elizabeth Inchbald, by Amy Garnai (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), about other writers that Jane Austen read and admired: http://www.nbol-19.org/view_doc.php?index=147
Articles of interest:
-This late edition news: from Tracy Kiely of Murder at Mansfield Park fame [and other Jane Austen mysteries], Battle of the Bonnets– get your fightin’ gloves on for Bronte v. Austen, legal style! [with thanks to Kerri S for the link]
Museums / Exhibits:
-National Portrait Gallery: Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery – 27 July – 30 October 2011: “This exhibition illuminates the life and work of the Gallery’s first director, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), a man described by one contemporary as ‘the Alpha and Omega’ of the Victorian art world.” http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/eastlake
Shopping:
The “Keep Calm & Carry On” theme that has been splattered everywhere from cards to books to wall hangings and t-shirts – here is a new contender!
-These are past our time period but How to Be a Retronaut offers this great collection of Victorian photographs, sure to bring you a daily chuckle: don’t an awful lot of these husbands and wives LOOK ALIKE?! [not to mention a tad grim?]
Jane Austen in Vermont 