The local Library in Bluffton South Carolina has been having weekly Downton Abbey discussions since the first episode of Season 3, all culminating in an Afternoon Tea this past week. A Season recap, Delicious fare, Fine company, Gorgeous hats, and Games of trivia to test our Downton Abbey brain power! – all staged with perfect finesse by Amanda, our fearless leader and Reference Librarian, the intent to keep us all (over 70 of us!) from falling into a deep Downton Abbey depression. We toasted Julian Fellowes, bid our adieus to Sybil and Matthew and wondered aloud as to where the show shall take us next year, alas! eleven months of impatient waiting. We were asked which actor would we most like to have dinner with; which actor we would most like to be in a scene with; our favorite quotes; most memorable scene? and trivia questioned on our knowledge of all things Downton [like: Where does Lord Grantham sit at the dinner table? What is the proper dress for a dinner at home without guests? Where is the story set? Where is the actual Highclere Castle?, etc…] – most of us found we should have to re-watch all three seasons to get a a passing grade!
I append some pictures to share the day, with a Hearty Thanks to Amanda and the Friends of the Bluffton Library for all their efforts to prolong the Downton Abbey season as long as possible – I think even Violet would approve!
This past week’s Downton Abbey had its usual witty remarks from all quarters, Violet yet again leading the pack. But my favorite by far came from Mrs. Patmore, as she says to Ethel:
“Anyone who has use of their limbs can make a salmon mousse.”
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My mother-in-law always made salmon mousse – I cannot recall a single family gathering where it was not upon the table, eye and all – and to keep me from forgetting these family gatherings, I actually inherited her much-used salmon mousse mold – but alas! have not put it to any use, despite having all limbs in fairly good working order.
But recipes abound if you should want to try – and if Ethel could pull this off, it should be easy sailing:
This is from the website Downton Abbey Cooks, worth a visit for the show’s food history and great recipes [there IS a great deal of cookikng and eating!], all from Pamela Foster, author of Abbey Cooks Entertain:
This sandwich adds a lovely punch of color to your tea tray, contrasting dark pumpernickel bread with deep orange smoked salmon. The Ritz London serves a similar version with whisky, but I like the fresh flavors of vodka and dill. You are only limited by your imagination.
Ingredients
1/3 cup non fat greek yoghurt
1 tbsp. minced chives
2 tbsp. whisky
4 ounces smoked salmon
1 1/2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
For the Sandwiches
12 slices dark wheat or pumpernickel bread, crusts removed
2 ounces cold smoked salmon, cut into strips: you can also use hot smoked salmon as pictured above
Method
To make the mousse
Put the greek yoghurt, chives, vodka, salmon, lemon juice and pepper in a food processor and process for 20 to 30 seconds or until smooth. Cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days to let the flavours blend.
To make the sandwiches
Roll the bread slices flat with a rolling pin . Spread the salmon mousse on one side of each slice and arrange pieces of smoked salmon on top. Roll up and place seam side down on a serving plate. Cover with a damp tea towel or paper towels until ready to serve.
You can make larger pinwheels by cutting in half diagonally and stand on the flat edge. You can also cut into smaller bite sized 2 inch angled sections.
Makes 12 large or 24 mini pinwheels
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Here are links to other recipes, some made in the mold, some in bowls:
Perhaps Ethel’s praise-worthy attempts to be a cook who actually cooks something edible and Mrs. Patmore’s kindness in helping, despite the grousing of Mr. Carson, might indeed see “the return of the salmon mousse,” even in my house.
Last week, Downton Abbey ended with Carson singing a song while polishing the silver, quite jovial over hearing the positive prognosis for Mrs. Hughes. We can wonder at the plot turn – there have been previous intimations that Hughes and Carson should somehow hook up and exert even greater control over downstairs life – they do after all seem to genuinely care about and respect each other … but who knows what direction this shall all take – but just want to append the words of the song he was singing – a sure clue in this alone:
The song is titled “Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron” – “a traditional English folk song written in the 19th century about a housewife carrying out her linen chores” [wikipedia]:
‘Twas on a Monday morning
When I beheld my darling
She looked so neat and charming
In every high degree She looked so neat and nimble, O
A-washing of her linen, O
Refrain
Dashing away with the smoothing iron
Dashing away with the smoothing iron
She stole my heart away.
‘Twas on a Tuesday morning
When I beheld my darling
She looked so neat and charming
In every high degree
She looked so neat and nimble, O
A-hanging out her linen, O (Refrain)
‘Twas on a Wednesday morning
When I beheld my darling
She looked so neat and charming
In every high degree
She looked so neat and nimble, O
A-starching of her linen, O (Refrain)
‘Twas on a Thursday morning
When I beheld my darling
She looked so neat and charming
In every high degree
She looked so neat and nimble, O
A-ironing of her linen, O (Refrain)
‘Twas on a Friday morning
When I beheld my darling
She looked so neat and charming
In every high degree
She looked so neat and nimble, O
A-folding of her linen, O (Refrain)
‘Twas on a Saturday morning
When I beheld my darling
She looked so neat and charming
In every high degree
She looked so neat and nimble, O
A-airing of her linen, O (Refrain)
‘Twas on a Sunday morning
When I beheld my darling
She looked so neat and charming
In every high degree
She looked so neat and nimble, O
A-wearing of her linen, O (Refrain)
Well, I suppose most of the readers of this blog are also obsessed with Downton Abbey, despite it being a century removed from our own favorite Austen-related time period (Austen reference #1 and counting)– who can resist The Fashion? The Passion? The Soap-Opera! The House! The Intrigue! – and tonight for us on this side of the big pond, the season finale [though that was really last week, with this a Christmas special add-on, but I won’t quibble – at least we don’t have to wait until Christmas!…] – but we shall expect cliffhanger number 2, and be properly impatient for the next season, which is to inlcude Shirley MacLaine as Lady Cora’s mother – just imagine the sparks bewteen MacLaine and Maggie Smtih!
But I write today of an interesting development in the Burlington [VT] Free Press which tells the tale of one Andrew Johnson, a.k.a. Matthew Crawley, who unbeknownst to him until 25 years ago, finds he is the sole surviving male heir [‘male’ being the requirement for British inheritance laws] of an estate, huge mansion and 600 acres, in Mr. Darcy’s land of Derbyshire [we have to bring Jane Austen in here somehow (Austen #2)!]
Now, the 87-year old Mr. Johnson is the owner of a lumberyard in Bristol Vermont, so heading over to England to take over the estate and become one of the landed gentry did not seem to fit into his life [recall Matthew’s arrival at Downton and seeing no need for the ministrations of his valet nearly sent the man into a full-blown state of depression!]
Andrew Johnson -Burlington Free Press
and Downton’s Matthew Crawley [Dan Stevens, a.k.a. Edward Ferrars – Austen #3 ]:
Matthew Crawley of Downton Abbey - PBS
Calke Abbey is the estate in question, now actually part of the National Trust, given over as payment of taxes, and now one of the most visited historic homes in the UK.
Calke Abbey - Lonely Planet
which has the look of “Netherfield Park” in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice (Austen #4):
I send you to the Burlington Free Press article by Susan Green – to find the odd mix of the various baronets who inhabited Calke, and now all Mr. Johnson’s illustrious ancestors – we have hermits and bird egg collectors, and the true-life adventure of the Lord of the Manor and his below-stairs mistress, later his wife – all proving yet again that truth is stranger [and sometimes more interesting] than fiction! [do we still see Lord G and Maid Jane meeting once again?]
Here are a few tidbits:
A spectacular canopied “State Bed” was a 1734 wedding present from Queen Caroline, wife of King George II, to Lady Caroline Manners. She tied the knot with the fifth baronet, one of five Sir Henry Harpurs in a span of more than 400 years. Maybe the royal gift didn’t suit her taste. This magnificent piece covered in embroidered Chinese silk never left it’s crate. Once rediscovered, it has been kept in a temperature-and-humidity-controlled glass case, apart from a 1985 voyage across the Atlantic for an exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington,DC.
The walls of Calke Abbey sport numerous stuffed animal heads, hunting trophies that peer down on visitors along with the portraits of privileged human inhabitants through the ages. Sir Vauncey is in uniform, holding a sword. The chap who preceded him, Sir John Harpur (the ninth baronet, 1824-1886) wears a top hat and appears to be proud of his enormous mutton-chop whiskers; his marriage to Lady Catherine Crewe, also from nobility, is what would provide the family with a hyphenated name thereafter.
An air of mystery and scandal clings to Sir Henry Harpur (1759-1819), known as “the isolated baronet.” He was a recluse who took a lady’s maid, Nanette Hawkins, as his mistress. They ultimately wed, but he remained something of a hermit. A tunnel was dug under the lawn “so the staff would not intrude on his view” from the house, Majusiak said. The help also received their orders in writing from a boss who dreaded direct contact with them.
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.
*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]
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 local Library in Bluffton South Carolina has been having weekly Downton Abbey discussions since the first episode of Season 3, all culminating in an Afternoon Tea this past week. A Season recap, Delicious fare, Fine company, Gorgeous hats, and Games of trivia to test our Downton Abbey brain power! – all staged with perfect finesse by Amanda, our fearless leader and Reference Librarian, the intent to keep us all (over 70 of us!) from falling into a deep Downton Abbey depression. We toasted Julian Fellowes, bid our adieus to Sybil and Matthew and wondered aloud as to where the show shall take us next year, alas! eleven months of impatient waiting. We were asked which actor would we most like to have dinner with; which actor we would most like to be in a scene with; our favorite quotes; most memorable scene? and trivia questioned on our knowledge of all things Downton [like: Where does Lord Grantham sit at the dinner table? What is the proper dress for a dinner at home without guests? Where is the story set? Where is the actual Highclere Castle?, etc…] – most of us found we should have to re-watch all three seasons to get a a passing grade!
Jane Austen in Vermont 