18th century

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Web Round-up…all things Austen

So here is another week’s worth of tidbits on Jane….[and this is only a smattering!]

  • An article by Gary Dexter in The Telegraph  U.K. tells how the title Pride & Prejudice originated in Fanny Burney’s Cecelia.
  • On the JASNA site, a real treat is Diana Birchall’s In Defense of Mrs. Elton , now online and as originally published by the 1999 AGM with Janet McMaster’s illustrations, with a new introduction dated August 2008 by the author.
  • Be sure to visit Laurel Ann’s Austenprose for her Mansfield Park Madness events over the next two weeks (starts August 15)…there will be contests and free book giveaways, and there is always the hope that you might change your view about Fanny…
  • There’s an indie pop group called Pemberley, but Austen is nowhere in sight… 
  • Ms. Place pens a delicious post on Hot Chocolate, 18 – 19th Century Style on her Jane Austen’s World Blog
  • Dame Boudicca names Elizabeth Bennet the “Pop Culture Woman of the Week” 
  • At Fashion-era.com, see the article on the Regency Gentlewoman  of Jane Austen’s time.
  • And on another fashion note, here is blog devoted solely to BUTTONS: see the postings on the types of buttons and the history of the button  at Petronella Luiting’s Buttons & Fabrics Blog.
  • If you cannot visit the Geffrye Museum   in London, trek over to its website where you can view the museum collection “Life in the Living Room from 1600-2000”  It shows the changing style of the English domestic interior in a series of period rooms from 1600 to the present day.  There are also several virtual tours… great fun…
  • And Jane makes another list…this time as one of the Top Ten Literary Virgins at John Sutherland’s book blog at the Guardian.uk.
  • Author Kate Atkinson (her Behind the Scenes at the Museum is one of my favorite books) reveals in an interview in the Times-Online that her next book will be about Jane Austen and will be titled “What Would Jane Do?”…can’t wait!
  • At Paper Menagerie, the Jane Austen Notebooks are available again…. check them out…

 The August newsletter from the Jane Austen Centre in Bath has two articles on hunting during the Regency Period: Sport Hunting in Regency England, and In the Pink: Dressing for the Fox Hunt.

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  • and the Burnley & Trowbridge Co. of Williamsburg, VA is offering three fall workshops in 18th century fashion:  The Lady’s Stay (Sept 6-7); An 18th century Gown of the Last Quarter (Nov 14-16); and Ladies’ Riding Habits (Jan. 31- Feb 1, 2009)
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Games People Play

WHIST is a card game well associated with the 18th and 19th centuries. But here is a game which sounds so much more up Jane Austen’s alley; it is called Conversation. The description of the game comes from the two-volume set of diaries (edited by Andrew Oliver) of Samuel Curwen. Curwen was an American, but he spent much time in England – hence the name of the book published by Harvard University Press in 1972: The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist.

It is March 1784, and Curwen is in London:

28. Fair but very cold sharp air… Dined at Mr. Charles Brand’s in Lambs Conduit street with our whole family, by invitation given 10 days ago. Drank tea and passed evening till near 12 o’clock there, the younger part playing at a game called Conversation Cards, which is done in the following manner. To each person is dealt 9, by 3 at each time, on each card is inscribed a word as King, Queen, Gentleman, Lady, Night, Morning, or any short sentence. The person on the dealer’s left hand throws one and addresses or speaks it, and so each peson successively adding some pertinent as he can invent till all being out of hand, the cards are [one word {ie, illegible or missing word; I wonder: gathered?} ] and the person who first threw a card down forms a story from his hand taking the words on his card for the text filling up the interval in the best manner he can till each has told his story; these being laid aside a new parcel is dealt as before &c. &c.
                        — The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist (vol 2), pp. 979-80

Conversation Cards, anyone??

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The Web Round-up: all things Austen

 Some tidbits for this week: