Persuasions

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For Your Reading Pleasure: JASNA’s “Persuasions On-Line”

Happy New Year One and All! If one of your Resolutions was to read more about Jane Austen, here is a great place to start!

The latest Persuasions On-Line is now available on the JASNA.org website:  http://www.jasna.org/publications/persuasions-online/volume-39-no-1/

Persuasions On-Line Volume 39, No. 1 (Winter 2018)

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING 2017: KANSAS CITY: PERSUASION: 200 YEARS OF CONSTANCY AND HOPE

  1. How the “Long War” Affected Jane Austen’s Family and Her Novels – Collins Hemingway
  2. “She Had Only Navy-Lists and Newspapers for Her Authority” – Hazel Jones
  3. Sailors in Fiction before Persuasion’s “Gentlemen of the Navy” – Susan Allen Ford
  4. Captain Wentworth and the Duke of Monmouth: Brilliant, Dangerous, and Headstrong – Jocelyn Harris
  5. The Grace to Deserve: Weighing Merit in Jane Austen’s Persuasion – Mary Ellen Bertolini
  6. A Tale of Two Captains: Whose Heart Is Worth Having? – Theresa Kenney
  7. Ivory and Canvas: Naval Miniature Portraiture in Jane Austen’s Persuasion – Moriah Webster
  8. “A State of Alteration”: Stylistic Contrasts in the Musgroves’ Parlor – Kristen Miller Zohn
  9. Revisiting Lake Louise 1993 – Juliet McMaster

MISCELLANY

  1. Three Pamphlets on the Leigh-Perrot Trial: Why Austen Sent Susan to Crosby – Margie Burns
  2. Where Jane Austen Sat: The “Austin” Box at Edmund Kean’s Shylock, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, March 5, 1814 – David Worrall
  3. Nonsense Elements in Jane Austen’s Juvenilia – Donna R. White
  4. Marianne Dashwood’s Repentance, Willoughby’s “Repentance,” and The Book of Common Prayer – Brenda S. Cox
  5. The Probable Location of Donwell Abbey in Jane Austen’s Emma – Kenneth Smith
  6. To be “esteemed quite worthy”: Fortunes, Futures, and Economic Language in Persuasion – Maria Frawley, Kaitlyn Nigro, and Gwendolyn Umbach
  7. “Even Miss Bates Has Mind”: A Cognitive Historicist Reading of Emma’s Miss Bates – Kathleen R. Steele
  8. Jane, Bingley, and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Or, the Other Couple in Pride and Prejudice – Jenny Rebecca Rytting
  9. Jane Austen in the Nursing Classroom: A Tool to Expand Psychiatric Assessment Skills – Tawny Burgess
  10. Pride and Prejudice in Black and White: First and Last Impressions (1938–1967) – Reinier Wels
  11. Pride and Prejudice in Black and White: De vier dochters Bennet (1961–1962) – Reinier Wels
  12. Lost in Austen: A Postmodern Reanimation of Pride and Prejudice – Wim Tigges
  13. Jane Austen Bibliography, 2017 – Deborah Barnum

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The Table of Contents of Persuasions 39 (2017) is now online as well (alas! the essays are not – reason enough to become a JASNA member…): http://www.jasna.org/publications/persuasions/no-39/

Papers from the AGM 2O17: HUNTINGTON BEACH: JANE AUSTEN IN PARADISE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY

  1. Women of Genius: Jane Austen, Germaine de Staël, and the Nineteenth-Century Heroine – Gillian Dow (13-30)
  2. Godmersham Park Library: Jane Austen’s Paradise Regained – Peter Sabor (31-44)
  3. The Child Is Mother to the Novelist: From the Juvenilia to the Novels – Juliet McMaster (45-56 )
  4. Dirty Girls, Dirty Books, and the Breakdown of Boundaries in Jane Austen’s Fiction – Kathy Justice Gentile (57-69)
  5. “I Cannot Get Out”: The Self-Imposed Afterlife of Maria Bertram – Leta Sundet (70-77)
  6. Sanditon at 200: Intimations of a New Consumerist Society – Sara Dustin (78-87)
  7. Modernist Jane: Austen’s Reception by Writers of the Twenties and Thirties – Lisa Tyler (88-99)
  8. In and Out of the Foxholes: Talking of Jane Austen During and After World War II – Annette M. LeClair (100-111)
  9. Angela Thirkell and “Miss Austen” – Sara Bowen (112-125)
  10. After Jane Austen – Devoney Looser (126-146)
  11. JASNA and the Academy: The Anxiety of Affiliation – Elaine Bander (147-162)
  12. Becoming Catherine Morland: A Cautionary Tale of Manuscripts in the Archive – Emily C. Friedman (163-173)

MISCELLANY

  1. Jane Austen and Catharine Macaulay – Karen Green (177-183)
  2. A Third Publisher’s Advertisement for Susan Found: Why Didn’t Crosby Publish Jane Austen? – Margie Burns (184-202)
  3. The Watsons: Its Place in Jane Austen’s Development as a Writer – David Hughes (203-212)
  4. Deception with a Graceful Bow: Northanger Abbey’s General Tilney and Dance Semiotics – Sabrina M. Gilchrist (213-221)
  5. Jane Austen and Roman History – Herbert W. Benario (222-225)
  6. “She Heard All Mrs. Elton’s Knight-Errantry on the Subject”: Emma as Chivalric Romance -Tiffany Schubert (226-234)
  7. Mobility, the Outdoors, and Social Position in Persuasion – E. Holly Pike (235-242)
  8. Sanditon and the Pursuit of Health – Michael Biddiss (243-254)

That should keep you all busy for a good while…

c2019 Jane Austen in Vermont; images courtesy of JASNA.org
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Wishing Jane Austen a Very Happy Birthday!

austen-silhouetteThe first order of business today, on this 241st birthday of Jane Austen, is the annual publication of JASNA’s Persuasions On-Line Vol. 37, No. 1 (Winter 2016). Click here for the Table of Contents to yet another inspiring collection of essays, some from the 2016 AGM in Washington DC on EMMA AT 200, “NO ONE BUT HERSELF” –  and other “Miscellany” – all about Jane Austen…and perfect winter reading material…

Here is the link: http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol37no1/toc.html

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Here are the essays: (you might especially notice Gillian Dow’s essay on the Emma exhibition at Chawton House Library this year (website under redevelopment til Christmas) – for those of you who could not attend, this is the next best thing to being there!)

“The Encouragement I Received”: Emma and the Language of Sexual Assault
Celia Easton

“Could He Even Have Seen into Her Heart”: Mr. Knightley’s Development of Sympathy
Michele Larrow

Emma’s “Serious Spirit”: How Miss Woodhouse Faces the Issues Raised in Mansfield Park and Becomes Jane Austen’s Most Complex Heroine
Anna Morton

“Small, Trifling Presents”: Giving and Receiving in Emma
Linda Zionkowski

Oysters and Alderneys: Emma and the Animal Economy
Susan Jones

Epistolary Culture in Emma: Secrets and Social Transgressions
L. Bao Bui

Divas in the Drawing Room, or Italian Opera Comes to Highbury
Jeffrey Nigro and Andrea Cawelti

Mrs. Elton’s Pearls: Simulating Superiority in Jane Austen’s Emma
Carrie Wright

Multimedia Emma: Three Adaptations
Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield

Jane Austen’s Emma at 200: From English Village to Global Appeal
Gillian Dow

MISCELLANY

Discerning Voice through Austen Said: Free Indirect Discourse, Coding, and Interpretive (Un)Certainty
Laura Moneyham White and Carmen Smith

“The Bells Rang and Every Body Smiled”: Jane Austen’s “Courtship Novels”
Gillian Dooley

Courtship and Financial Interest in Northanger Abbey
Kelly Coyne

Curious Distinctions in Sense and Sensibility
Ethan Smilie

“If Art Could Tell”: A Miltonic Reading of Pride and Prejudice
James M. Scott

Looking for Mr. Darcy: The Role of the Viewer in Creating a Cultural Icon
Henriette-Juliane Seeliger

Replacing Jane: Fandom and Fidelity in Dan Zeff’s Lost in Austen (2008)
Paige Pinto

Fanny Price Goes to the Opera: Jonathan Dove’s and Alasdair Middleton’s Mansfield Park
Douglas Murray

Austen at the Ends of the Earth: The Near and the Far in Persuasion
Katherine Voyles

Jane Austen Bibliography, 2015
Deborah Barnum

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Let’s look at what Austen’s father wrote about her arrival on December 16, 1775:

You have doubtless been for some time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age grown such bad reckoners but so it was, for Cassy certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago:  however last night the time came, and without a great deal of warning, everything was soon happily over.  We have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion.  She is to be Jenny, and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy.  Your sister thank God is pure well after it, and send her love to you and my brother, not forgetting James and Philly…

[Letter from Mr. Austen to his sister Philadelphia Walter, December 17, 1775, as quoted from Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen, A Family Record, Cambridge, 2004, p.27.]

Happy Birthday Miss Austen! – you continue to inspire, intrigue, and offer insights like no other!

c2016 Jane Austen in Vermont
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JASNA Persuasions 33 and Persuasions 32.2 ~ It’s All About Sense & Sensibility!

News from JASNA:

The latest issue of Perusasions – volume 33 [not as the image indicates!], papers from the Fort Worth AGM on 200 Years of Sense and Sensibility has been mailed to members [and like me you hopefully already have received it!]  The journal is not online – you must be a JASNA member to receive it.  Here is the table of contents:

http://jasna.org/persuasions/printed/pers33.html

And Persuasions On-Line 32.2(Summer 2012) is now available – and this is online:

200 Years of Sense and Sensibility
Selected Essays from the Conference at the University of St. Andrews

 Here is the index page: http://jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol32no2/index.html

Certainly enough interesting reading for the weekend!

@2012 Jane Austen in Vermont
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You are Cordially Invited to an Afternoon with Professor Joan Klingel Ray!

A reminder to all who happen to be in lovely autumnal Vermont on Sunday September 27, to join us for our celebration of Jane Austen’s move to Chawton!  We are hosting former JASNA President and current President of the North American Friends of Chawton House Library Joan Klingel Ray.

joan ray picture

Author of Jane Austen for Dummies, Prof. Ray, as “Doctor of Austenology”  will regale us with her humorous Austenesque insights in her presentation “Jane Austen for Smarties” ~  to be followed by a mini-concert with Lar Duggan and Dominique Gagne of “Impropriety” and dancing demonstrations by a few couples from the Burlington Country Dancers[with our own JASNA member Val Medve and husband Tom!]  Light refreshments will be served, plenty of time for questions and answers with Joan, and copies of JA for Dummies will be available for sale – all graciously autographed by the author!

book cover ja for dummies

 Dr. Ray is a Professor of English and President’s Teaching Scholar at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.  She has published scholarly articles on Charles Dickens, George Herbert, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Samuel Johnson [the subject of her dissertation], and thankfully for all of us, Jane Austen.  A number of these articles on Austen are available at the JASNA website, and I append several of the links here for your reading enjoyment. 

We are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Austen’s July 1809 move to  Chawton Cottage.  After five years of living in Bath [1801-1806] and three years in Southampton [1806-1809], Mrs. Austen and Cassandra and Jane finally were coming home to their beloved Hampshire.  Her brother Edward Knight [nee Austen] had inherited the estate at Chawton House, now home to the Chawton House Library for Early Women Writers, and offered the nearby Cottage to his mother and two sisters.  It was here that Austen was finally able to persue her writing – she revised the three novels she had penned at Steventon [Northanger Abbey, Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice] and wrote three more [Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion].  We can be forever grateful to Edward for this gift of a such a home!

Hope you can join us for the celebration!  The event runs from 2-5 pm and is free and open to the public.  The Hauke Family Campus Center is at 375 Maple Street, Champlain College, Burlington, Vermont.

Further Reading:

  • A few articles by Joan Klingel Ray:

“Jane Austen’s Case Study of Child Abuse:  Fanny Price,”  Persuasions 13 (1991), p. 16-26

 “In Defense of Lady Russell, or the Godmother Knew Best,”   Persuasions 15 (1993), p. 207-215.

“The One-sided Romance of Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy,”  Persuasions On-Line Vol. 28, No. 1 (Winter 2007)

“‘The Amiable Prejudices of a Young [Writer’s] Mind’: The Problems of Sense and Sensibility,”  Persuasions On-Line, vol. 26, No. 1 (Winter 2005)

“James Stanier Clarke’s Portrait of Jane Austen,”  with Richard James Wheeler, Persuasions 27 (2005), p. 112-118  [available in Adobe pdf file]

“Victorians versus Victorians – Understanding Dear ‘Aunt Jane’,”  Persuasions30 (2008), p. 53-66.   [not yet online; this is also the paper of her “Smarties” talk, so don’t read it if you are joining us on Sunday!]

  • A few articles on Chawton:

McDonald, Irene B.  “The Chawton Years (1809-1817) – ‘Only’ Novels,”  Persuasions On-Line, vol. 22 No. 1 (Winter 2001)

Bowden, Jean K.  “Living at Chawton Cottage,”  Persuasions 12 (1990), p. 79-86.

  • Reviews of Jane Austen for Dummies
  1. A review at JASNA.org
  2. Reviews and comments at Amazon
  3. Information at the Dummies Store at Wiley Publishing
  4. Laurel Ann’s review at Austenprose

And finally, see the post at AustenBlog for August 18, 2006, where Mags and Joan have a lively conversation on reading Austen, writing about Austen, JASNA, the AGMs, the writing of Dummies, and the dangling “equipment” of pigs in the 2005 Pride & Prejudice.

And now, after all that reading homework, please join us on Sunday!

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An Austen Brothers & Sisters Bibliography

Take a quick look at the JASNA website where a select bibliography on “Austen’s Siblings in Fact and Fiction in JASNA Publications”  has been posted ~ all in preparation for the upcoming AGM in Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love.  All the articles are in JASNA publications, many with online links.

Here is a taste to start your reading adventure:

Tthe facts:  “Austen Brothers and Sisters” by Park Honan. Persuasions 10 (1988): 59-64.

The fiction:  “Sisterhood and Friendship in Pride and Prejudice” by Deborah J. Knuth. Persuasions 11 (1989): 99-109.

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Persuasions No. 1 ~ Now Online!

JASNA.org has added online** the full text of the Number 1 Persuasions journal that has long been out-of-print:

persuasions no 1 cover

Persuasion*  No. 1.  December 16, 1979 

Board of Directors
President’s Report 
Brief highlights of the meeting 
St. Nicholas Appeal      -George H. Tucker
Our First Dinner   – Lorraine Hanaway
Pemberley Revisited     -Donald Greene
The Picturesque in Pride and Prejudice   – A. Walton Litz
A Member’s First Pilgrimage to Winchester   – Hilma D. Barrett
Some notes on the “parish business” in Emma    -Cathy Fried
Telegram from the Jane Austen Society 
Letter from James T. Farrell 
Quiz Angela Addison
Meeting aboard the Elizabeth Bennet

* The first issue was titled “Persuasion” – it was decided to change the name to Persuasions for subsequent issues

**[Many thanks go to Montreal member Renée Charron (Treasurer, Canada), who scanned and corrected the full text of Persuasion No. 1, as she also did for the other eleven out-of-print issues of Persuasions.]

Drawing from the cover of Persuasion No. 1
by Pamela Susan Koppel, age 15, of Tucson, Arizona

[Posted by Deb]

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Better Late than Never

Long over due are many comments on VARIOUS Austen (or Austen-related) topics. I have been so lazy in completing my online thoughts on the Austen Symposium in Lennoxville, Quebec (March!), and when at lunch with Janeite MKay, and she asked about the play, I had the thought: Well, better late than NEVER! So thoughts on that, and the last talk will come — I promise!

A little closer in time are two JASNA meetings. Our own JASNA-Vermont chapter hosted HOPE GREENBERG in Montpelier on June 7th; and Montreal/Quebec City’s chapter hosted a ‘Donwell Abbey’ strawberry picking at Elaine Bander’s Montreal home.

Before I forget – since Donwell Abbey reminds me – David from Montpelier, who attended our meeting on the 7th (he is a JASNA member! Yeah, David!!), spoke about reading P.D. James. This brought up James’ JAS (Jane Austen Society; in Britain) lecture a decade-plus ago. I just happened to have a copy of that the year’s “Report” (as JAS’s journal is called). So in digging it out for David, I re-read it myself. She brings up some points (since she treats Emma as a detective novel) about ‘clues’ in the novel that is unique and thought-provoking. But for me the more startling ideas were thoughts fired by her comments on Mr Knightley! James painted a picture of an exceptionally strong man, one who not the namby-pamby many name him to be. Makes me want to pull the novel out again — and soon!

HopeGreenberg_orange-regencyHope’s illustrated lecture on Fashion was one of the most comprehensive I have ever had the priviledge to listen to. The amazing amount of pictures – drawn from paintings, clothing (who knew Burlington’s Fleming Museum had so much in their ‘attics’!!), period drawings, etc. – as well as the lovely gowns Hope had on display (including the one she wore!), all brought to our capacity audience, visually and virtually, the fashion in Austen’s era. Thank you, Hope.

One JASNA-Vermont couple, Jim and Carol, had this to say about the presentation: Sunday was delightful …We enjoyed the presentation, especially once the sound was turned up a bit [Hope was microphoned]. I thought the visuals were very effective and useful for someone who is not at all versed in the subtleties of Regency fashion. Indeed, I have been most impressed with the intellectual content and professionalism of all three presentation we have attended. We look forward to our next meeting!”

Thanks, Jim! Great to hear such words of encouragement.

David wrote succinctly: “Thank you for hosting such a nice event…It was the largest attendance I have yet seen at a lecture, although it was only my third.”

We do have a growing and attentive audience in the Montpelier region! ‘Thanks,’ to everyone who attended Sunday.

And David shared his opinion that to bring Austen elsewhere in the state would greatly increase our presence; he writes about having some thing in St. Johnsbury — someday.

For the Montreal JASNA meeting, I went in order to meet their guest speaker, Jan Fergus. Jan’s book on 18th century publishing in Britain utilized the 1730-40 ledger (held at the Bodleian) belonging to Robert Gosling — Mary Gosling’s great-grandfather (my diarist; see SmithandGosling.wordpress.com, my research blog). Jan decried the sloppiness of Norton’s recent Austen publications; she ‘would proof them for free’, she exclaimed, as she showed the handwritten notes in the rear cover of her copy. Her lecture was a preview of her AGM lecture – on Brothers and Sisters in Austen’s novels, of course (Jan centered Sunday’s talk on Jane and Elizabeth Bennet).

The food was plentiful – and the strawberries sweet and delicious! Elaine has a lovely home, and I’m sure everyone was grateful for the invitation to visit her perfumed garden (peonies!). The weather held off just enough to make the day quite pleasant.

Two of the Montreal members are off to England, Elaine Bander herself; and Peter Sabor gives a paper at the Chawton Conference. Someday I hope it’s me that is able to hop a plane and have people anticipate some talk I’m about to give…

Which reminds me again, and I will close with this thought, of my lunch with MKay. We got to discussing – what else! – P&P films (1980, 1995 and 2005), as well as Lost in Austen. And that brought around a discussion of Darcy and Mr Collins. Between this lunch and Jan Fergus’s talk, I am convinced more than ever that 1995 (and, by extension, the Lost in Austen series) got poor Mr Collins ‘wrong’; that Charlotte was never a martyr to her marriage (a match made in heaven? perhaps not; but NOT a match made in hell either…); and that there is more to the Darcy-Collins pairing than people are willing to admit (MY paper proposal for Chawton; not accepted, of course.)

Time’s a tickin’ and Sunday morning’s winding down; so I will get off my soap box and get back to my book – a fascinating look at Virigina Woolf’s servants: Mrs Woolf and the Servants, by Alison Light. A ‘souvenir’ from my Montreal trip…

Still haven’t heard if my registration for the AGM puts me in among the 550 members going to Philadelphia… I see the numbers, as of 6/19, now stand at 503.

And JASNA’s website announces the inclusion of Persuasions vol. 3 – published in 1981. We must applaud JASNA’s dedication (and those who put these journals online for all) in making these invaluable resources available, and for free!

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Hot off the Press!

persuasions-cover30Yesterday, a FedEx box left on my stoop prior to lunch yielded up a BIG surprise: my contributor’s copies of JASNA’s annual journal PERSUASIONS, vol. 30 (2008). A brief email to Susan Allen Ford, the journal editor, to congratulate her on an ‘awesome’ volume, was answered by an email which said she hadn’t received her copies yet! Vermont’s good fortune (and mine) to be located next door to New Hampshire — from where the packages seem to have originated…

The first article I read was Edith Lank‘s telling of her annotated Brabourne edition of Austen letters. One curious thing: how could the books languish EIGHT years on her shelves, unopened?! A used book never passes my threshold without a thorough perusal! There is more on Miss Lank’s edition in Persuasions-Online.

Joan Klingel Ray offers up an interesting look at Victorian era perceptions of Austen, though I must comment that to Edward — a nephew who was in his late teens when his aunt died — Jane would surely have remained, over the 50 ensuing years, his “dear Aunt Jane”. Joan and I take differently, I think, to James-Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of Jane Austen. Joan knows the descendents; but I’ve come to know Edward and Emma through their own words! So: a discussion to look forward to when Joan Klingel Ray visits Vermont in September (see our EVENTS page).

I would be telling a lie if I didn’t confess that the very first article I checked out was my own… Oh, the pictures look lovely! (They come via the collection of The British Museum.) I had been so worried after seeing the proofs. Susan Allen Ford has been very positive in her reaction (the anonymous reader, too) to this article, in which I examine an Emma Austen 1833 trip to Derbyshire in the steps of Elizabeth Bennet. The article was only improved by their wishes for a lengthier piece and some illustrations.

The Chicago AGM’s theme of Austen’s legacy brings up many fascinating ideas: Jocelyn Harris invokes Dr. Johnson; Deb will surely be interested in turning straightaway to Janine Barchas‘ article on Gaskell’s North & South (Deb highly recommends the new TV series, which she’s been watching) — but what will she think of the author’s assumption that it is a veiled recreation of P&P??? Sarah Parry‘s article on “The Pemberley Effect: Austen’s Legacy to the Historic House Industry” is surely next on my list.

A special ‘legacy’: the writing desk that once belonged to Austen, has been in the family, and now has been donated to The British Library. Freydis Welland‘s personal take on this piece of history opens the always pleasurable MISCELLANY section of Persuasions. Although I’ve not seen Lost in Austen, Laurie Kaplan‘s article which closes the journal has the oh-so-tempting title “‘Completely without Sense’: Lost in Austen“.

More comments than this — teasing tantalizers or tantalizing teasers, since the journal (according to the JASNA website) is schedule to mail out on May 1st — will have to wait. The one thing that keeps me from delving deep into my copy is an article I’m working on, and I must get back to work.

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Previewing Persuasions

JASNA has posted a link to the table of contents for volume 30 (2008) of the Jane Austen Society of North America’s journal Persuasions. This annual is a peer-reviewed journal, featuring both articles based on papers presented at the October AGMs (Annual General Meeting; in 2008 it took placed in Chicago) and ‘miscellany’ — which includes my own article on the 1833 Austen-Smith journey to Derbyshire: they travelled pretty much in the shoes of Elizabeth Bennet! Watch the JASNA website, for I have been told the article might be posted on their “maps” page (a very interesting and quite useful resource, now augmented with related articles on places and travel pulled from the Persuasions archive).

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Austen Portraits??

JASNA has just recently made Persuasions No. 5  (1983) available online.  An alert Janeite (thanks Arnie!) raises a question on the article by Joan Austen-Leigh titled “Godmersham,”  on the auction of this property once owned by Austen’s brother Edward Austen Knight.  Also auctioned in that sale were two portraits of Jane Austen [reproduced below].  Does anyone know anything about these?  The Jane of the second portrait looks very much like the infamous “Rice” portrait, still questioned as actually being Jane:

rice-portrait

Jane Austen - "Rice" portrait

The only two pictures of Jane that are continually bandied about are the two watercolors done by her sister Cassandra:

janesketch

jane-austen-watercolor1 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and this silhouette believed to be her:

austen-silhouette

Jane Austen silhouette? - circa 1810-1815

Has there been further research into these two mentioned in Austen-Leigh’s article?  They are lovely, the first being exactly as I have pictured Austen (and also seems to be very like the “improved” renditions of the past fifty years.)  Any thoughts appreciated…

austen-portrait1-austen-leigh-article

Jane Austen - circa 1810, pencil & watercolor

 

austen-portrait2-austen-leigh

Jane Austen - circa 1810, watercolor

 

P.S.  When I posted this this morning, I did not do any research and have since had a few comments and done a little detective work and do find a few mentions of these portraits.  See the comments below for more information and citations.  But as I have been out of the loop for a few days and have not been checking the other Austen sites and blogs, I did not realize that Laurel Ann at Austenprose had posted a bit on Austen’s various portraits just 2 days ago!…so please check her site for a great run-through of the many faces of Jane Austen!