Amanda Vickery

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“The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen”

For those of us on this side of the pond, those who cannot yet see the just broadcast “The Many Lovers of Jane Austen” with Amanda Vickery on BBC Two – here is a short clip from the show about the JASNA AGM in Fort Worth Texas this past October… enjoy, at least until we can see more of the show…

For those with a BBC iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018nwtk/The_Many_Lovers_of_Miss_Jane_Austen/

Amanda Vickery – BBC2
 
An article on the show at Radio Times:
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2011-12-23/amanda-vickery-on-jane-austen’s-worldwide-appeal
 
Copyright @2011 Jane Austen in Vermont
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Web Round-up ~ All Things Austen [and then some…]

Updated! – I completely missed the following: The 2010 Jane Austen Tour at Feelin’ Feminine – the competition began July 19 and runs through August 3rd, so give your creative side full-throttle and see what you can come up with… click here for entry categories [fashion, crafts, visuals, character studies, etc…]

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I didn’t do a separate post on the latest issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World – another fully-packed , beautifully presented collection of articles – sometimes we think that everything worth reading / knowing about Jane Austen is on the Internet – and it is such a delight to get this journal every other month and just savor this hand-held treat, to be taken anywhere anytime without needing a “connection” to anything! – so in this issue:

  • Maggie Lane article on grandparents in Austen
  • the story of Queen Adelaide, wife to William IV [successor to George IV]
  • the Austen family wills
  • the business of smuggling
  • Jane Austen on ebooks
  • Henry Cope, the “Little Green Man or Bath Bugaboo”
  • Mags of Austenblog on Austen vs. the Brontes [guess who wins!]
  • letters, Society news, newspaper reprints from 1802, tidbits*

* this news item for instance:  the Austen statue in Lyme Regis  [where I genuflected and then burst into tears] has disappeared during renovation work and no one seems to know where it might be – so if any of you out there may have inadvertently taken off with it , you are to contact Maggie Lane at JARW [in confidence of course]  – and this article from March 2010, “Have you Seen Jane Austen’s Head?”  [unfortunately my picture of said head is on a slide]

[Image from JARW Magazine, No. 46, p.4]

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This year the 200th anniversary of Elizabeth Gaskell’s birth is being celebrated ~  here are a few links to follow the festivities – if you are in the Manchester area, there is a lot to choose from:

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Amanda Vickery, author of A Gentleman’s Daughter and Behind Closed Doors, can be heard at BBC4 [just seven days left!] on “Wicked Women” – Voices from the Old Bailey.  The upcoming radio piece on July 29 is on the voices of the children who founds themselves in court.  Click here for Ms. Vickery’s website to keep current on her speaking schedule.

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The Sotheby’s auction houses have been running amok with letters, cookery and decorative arts items selling like they were going two-for-one – here are just a few for browsing and drooling:

Regency Gilt-Bronze Candlesticks – £2000

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And if you are really into your laundry and while scrubbing and folding and ironing you care to give a thought to how it used to be done, the fabulous website Old & Interesting has a new post on the History of Starching Fabric – now what would Henry Tilney have to say about starching muslin…?

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The Jane Austen Centre’s website is a treasure trove of all things Jane – their online Magazine includes constantly updated articles on fashion, recipes, history, book reviews [yours truly was just honored to be asked to publish my review of Jennifer Forest’s Jane Austen’s Sewing Box], biographies, craft projects and the best of all, from the pen of Mags of Austenblog,  There Must be Murder, a 12-part novella!

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There seems to be an iphone game of P&P and Zombies – but I cannot handle this at all – this is one application my iphone will have to live without – back to the basics for me, a la Austenprose’s efforts to save us all…

[Posted by Deb]

 

 

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New Release ~ “Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England”

Just a heads-up on this book to be released October 12, 2009: 

Behind Closed Doors: at Home in Georgian England, by Amanda Vickery.  Yale University Press, 2009. [can be pre-ordered for $45.00]

Here is what the Yale University Press website has to say:

In this brilliant new work, Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Writing with her customary wit and verve, she introduces us to men and women from all walks of life: gentlewoman Anne Dormer in her stately Oxfordshire mansion, bachelor clerk and future novelist Anthony Trollope in his dreary London lodgings, genteel spinsters keeping up appearances in two rooms with yellow wallpaper, servants with only a locking box to call their own.

 

Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer’s ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition.

   

Amanda Vickery is reader in history, Royal Holloway University of London, and the author of The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England, which won the Whitfield, Wolfson, and Longman-History Today prizes. She is also the co-editor, with John Styles, of Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700–1830.

… a definite addition to your want list – and if you don’t already have it, you must also add Vickery’s previous work …

book cover - gentleman's daughter

The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England [Yale University Press, 1998; softbound edition, 2003] is already on my toppling TBR pile(s).  Here are a few [of the many] reviews of this earlier work, the winner of several history/ literary awards: