The Jane Austen Centre in Bath has just sent out its latest online newsletter ~ one of the articles is a fashion quiz, 10 questions to test your knowledge of the clothing of Austen’s day.
The whole newsletter is available here, this month with a few visual-musical treats, sales at the gift shop, Persuasion in French, and much more. And while there, be sure to look at the Online Magazine which contains many articles of interest.
Thanks to an alert Janeite and Laurie Viera Rigler’s facebook site, we have the following delightful doodles from the king of costume drama, Andrew Davies:
Well, now we know what Mr. Darcy was really thinking (or at least in the mind of Andrew Davies!)…yikes!
You can go to the National Doodle Day site for more information and other celebrity doodles.
According to one of my literary calendars, today [ January 10, 1837 ] is the day that Cardinal Newman made his oft-quoted remark:
Miss Austen has no romance!… What vile creatures her parsons are.’
… though he supposedly admired her works [and goodness! how we love those parsons!]
John Newman (1801-1890) was an English Catholic who at the age of 15 moved to Alton with his parents and lived at 59 High Street for three years (1816-1819) after his father took over the Baverstock Brewery. The house dating to 1769 bears a blue plaque by the door highlighting the fact. The previous owners were involved in a lawsuit with Austen’s brother Edward Knight over his failed Hampshire property. Alton is the nearest town to the village of Chawton where Austen lived until 1817. One wonders, did they ever meet in that overlapping year??
Further reading on Alton and Cardinal Newman:
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and on another note of important dates, I missed Cassandra’s birthday yesterday: January 9, 1773.
I love my mailman ~ it seems he brings me a surprise almost daily! Today, I find the latest issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World [Jan/Feb 2009, Issue 37], and here give you some thoughts on the contents:
“End of the Regency” about the soon to be released film on young Queen Victoria [March 2009 in Britain], starring Emily Blunt (on the cover above) as Victoria and Rupert Friend as Prince Albert (he starred in the 2005 P&P as Wickham and was fabulous in Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont)
“Write-on” about the importance of correspondence and the ways of letter-writing in Jane Austen’s time
“Why I Dig Jane” a talk with Alan Titchmarsh, popular British TV personality, gardener, and novelist [his latest book, Folly, is set in Bath and currently on the British best-selling fiction list] ~ He confesses that his favorite character is Emma.
“Illustrating Jane Austen” an article on the incomparable Hugh Thomson
“Playing Mary Bennet” on the actress Ruby Bentall, who acted the role of Mary Bennet in the Lost in Austen series (“with spindly glasses and horrible hair”…)
“Pottery and Poetry” which traces the life of Thomasina Dennis, 1770-1809, a comtemporary of Austen’s who worked for the Wedgwood Pottery family. The article includes some history of Josiah Wedgwood and his business [ironically, this week the Waterford / Wedgwood company announced it is filing for bankruptcy]
“Petticoat Politics” looks at the complex nature of Regency undergarments, never mentioned, but a large part of “dressing Jane” and her contemporaries
“Madame de Stael” and the story of why perhaps Jane Austen refused to attend a London literary salon at which Madame de Stael was to be present (could it have been her tempestuous love-life??)
“My Jane Austen” the column this month by Virginia Claire Tharrington on her months as an intern at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath (she also posted several weekly articles on Austenprose while she was there)
“A Goodly Heritage” by Marsha Huff, President of JASNA, on this past year’s Annual JASNA AGM in Chicago
“Portrait of a Lady” on the Jane Austen Society of the U.K. and the event presented in the fall by History Wardrobe on the fashion of Austen’s time
And Joceline Bury offers three book Reviews: An Aristocratic Affair by Janet Gleeson, a biography of Henriette Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough and sister of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire [The American title is: Privilege and Scandal: The Remarkable Life of Harriet Spencer, Sister of Georgiana]; The Immortal Jane Austen by Maggie Lane, a no-frills biography of a mere 50 pages, but laced with many illustrations and highly recommended by the reviewer; and Jane Austen Visits London by Vera Quinn, the charming little book that concentrates only on Austen’s travels to and writings about London [see my comments on this book here.]
So all in all a fine issue, and a perfect way to spend the upcoming weekend, immersed in all things Regency!
The portrait of Mr. Darcy (a.k.a. Colin Firth) that was used in the pivotal scene (Elizabeth gazing at Darcy’s portrait hanging in the portrait hall at Pemberley) in the 1995 A&E production of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice will be sold at auction on January 21, 2009 at Bonham’s Gentlemans Library Sale; the sale also includes a letter from Firth. The painting is expected to fetch £7,000 and the proceeds will go to charity ~ Oxfam and the Southampton and Winchester Vistors Group [see the Telegraph.co.uk and BBC News online for more information, including a downloadable copy of Firth’s letter at the BBC site ( and note the misspelling of “Pemberly” in the BBC article!)]
Now, wouldn’t we all like this hanging in our very own Great Hall, or anywhere in the house for that matter!
[If , however, this is a little out of your league, you can always buy the Mr. Darcy keyring at the Jane Austen Centre for £2.99 … ]
[Not quite Regency, but lovely all the same!]
Kelly & I wish you all a very Happy New Year!!
Cheers, from Janeite Kelly & Janeite Deb
I have a mix of tidbits I have been gathering over the past week or so, awaiting a moment to post them…so apologies for late news or repeated items!
*Visit the Joanna Waugh blog: Ms. Waugh, author of regency historicals [the latest is Blind Fortune] has several posts on the Christrmas traditions during the Regency period
*A lovely post on Idolising Jane about Unacceptable Proposals, ending with a fine analysis of the Knightley – Emma proposal scene
*Persuasions On-line [Winter 2008, Vol.29, No. 1] has published one of the talks from the Chicago AGM that I had attended that was quite interesting: “From Cover to Cover: Packaging Jane Austen from Egerton to Kindle” by Deirdre Gilbert, a discussion of the various covers and cover art that have housed Austen through the years.
*A new blog lately discovered: the Nature Diary of Colonel Brandon . Visit and enjoy!… written by “Colonel Brandon:” “Perhaps, it is true, I am the kind of man whom everybody speaks well of & nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see & nobody remembers”…. but he has wonderful posts on nature and writing and is an ardent lover of Jane Austen!
*Ellen Moody’s article on Jane Austen’s Heroes has been posted on the Jane Austen Centre’s Online Magazine site [and check out the site for other articles of note…]
*A Regency needlework map of England and Wales, circa 1820 is for sale at auction at Christies London January 20-21 [to bid online click here]
*JASNA has announced that “The Beautiful Cassandra: the pictures, the music, the dance by Juliet McMaster et al from the Chicago AGM is now available on the JASNA.org site.
*A new edition of a book on London: Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay and John Keay, editors THE LONDON ENCYCLOPAEDIA
Completely revised third edition, 1,101pp. Pan Macmillan. £50 (US $99.50) [978 1 4050 4924 5] [see this article in the Times online “Surveying London” by Rosemary Ashton]
See Visual Arts Book Reviews for a review of Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of American Culture, 1800-1940. By Dianne Sachko Macleod. Berkeley: University of California Press, September 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-520-23729-2, $45.00
*My JAIV co-hort Janeite Kelly has just posted on a book “A Lady of Fashion: Barbara Johnson’s Album of Style and Fabrics” [1987] on her other blog Two Teens in the Time of Austen ~ a great find Kelly!
And of course, you must visit the “usual suspects” for the always entertaining and informative Austen-related blog posts ~ so many this week about the holidays, etc…
“Happy Christmas” from Jane Austen in Vermont!
Our gift today shares short comments from a reader of Austen in 1836. Thanks to R.W. Chapman, we possess the reactions of family and friends that Jane Austen herself collected (printed in his volume of Austen Juvenilia). Here – in the diary of Ellen Tollet of Betley Hall (edited by Mavis E. Smith and newly published) – we see reactions to the novels from a reader with no ties to Austen. Miss Tollet perhaps treasured copies of the first edition, but likely came to read Austen because of the reprintings of the 1830s (for instance, see our 1833 copy of Sense and Sensibility). She does, however, mention “volumes” which indicates the sets – three volumes for all except Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (which appeared together in four volumes) – of the originals printed during Austen’s lifetime.
The first reference Miss Tollet makes of Austen is this entry of Saturday, 2 January 1836:
Cold, bad day – snow on the ground. Set Charles [her brother] to read ‘Mansfield Park’. How I delight in that book! I fancy all the people so well. I confess I think Edmund and Fanny too much alike to marry. I think he is something like W. Egerton [a family friend] though, of course, taller or more like a hero rather. [page 99]
Miss Tollet notes more Austen at the end of February:
Began to read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to Mary [her sister-in-law]. A very good book for the purpose, but I don’t like it so well as ‘Mansfield Park’ or ‘Persuasion’. It is a broad farce and the humour less delicate, and the story not so feeling or pretty. [p. 118: Thursday, 25 February 1836]
Days later she expounds on her views, and we perceive something of the reading habits of this young woman (born in 1812):
Read for the tenth time [!] the third volume of ‘Pride and Prejudice’. How excellent it is! Mr Bennet is enchanting, but Lydia’s disgrace far too bad. Great want of taste and delicacy towards her heroines. [p. 120: Tuesday, 8 March 1836]
In this day of television and film adaptations, it is refreshing to read (however short) comments about and reactions to Austen’s characters and situations (see also the post on Miss Russell Mitford). We invite readers to share with us their finds, among nineteenth century letters and diaries, revealing just what Austen’s early crop of readers thought and felt.
A very Merry Christmas to everyone!
From Kelly & Deb at Jane Austen in Vermont
Sothebys has just published the results of today’s auction [December 17, 2008, Sale L08411, London] of English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations, with a final take of 901,913 GBP! Literature by the likes of Shakespeare, Byron, Milton, Keats, Dickens, and Beatrix Potter seems to be alive and well (but alas! no Austen today!) Here is the result for a lock of Byron’s hair. I have posted a few other results at my Bygone Books Blog; but see the above link for all the results.
Lot 35. A Lock of Byron’s hair, dark brown with some white strands:
…cut from his head after his death at Missolonghi, coiled and tied with a pink ribbon, with an accompanying wrapper inscribed in the hand of Byron’s intimate friend John Cam Hobhouse (”a lock of hair cut from the head of Lord Byron after his death by Dr Bruno”), and with a later envelope recording that the lock was later presented “by Miss Leigh to Miss Marianne Gidely” 3,000 GBP
Jane Austen in Vermont 