“A lady stands at her dressing-table (right), her hair in an enormous pyramid decorated with feathers torn from a peacock, an ostrich and a cock. A young girl wearing a hat holds the peacock by a wing; another wearing a cap tugs hard at one of its tail feathers (which are very unlike peacock’s feathers). An ostrich (left), which has lost most of its tail feathers, is about to pluck out those which ornament the lady’s hair. A cock stands in the foreground (right), having lost almost all its tail feathers, many of which lie on the floor. A black servant wearing a turban stands on his mistress’s right, handing feathers from a number which he holds in his left hand. The lady, who faces three-quarter to the right, is elaborately dressed in the fashion of the day. Her pyramid of hair is decorated with lappets of lace and festoons…
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]
Jane Austen in Vermont 