Susannah Fullerton

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For Your Reading Pleasure: Susannah Fullerton’s “Literary Reader’s Guides”

 

JASA’s incomparable president Susannah Fullerton has the perfect gift for you or any of your best reading buddies. You can follow her along each month for the twelve months of 2019 with a new book to read, learn about, and discuss via email or in your own book groups. Called her “Literary Reader Guides,” you can sign up for the full year or just buy those Guides individually that interest you. This year Susannah will be doing Jane Austen’s Emma (in February) – Austen is surrounded in great company as you can see:

  • Jan – Evelyn Waugh and Brideshead Revisited 
  • Feb – Jane Austen and Emma 
  • Mar – Jerome K. Jerome and Three Men in a Boat 
  • Apr – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and The Hound of the Baskervilles 
  • May – Theodor Fontane and Effi Briest 
  • Jun – Guy de Maupassant and “The Necklace”
  • Jul – L. P. Hartley and The Go-Between
  • Aug – Samuel Butler and The Way of All Flesh
  • Sep – W. Somerset Maugham and Cakes and Ale 
  • Oct – Henry James and Washington Square 
  • Nov – Jean Rhys and Wide Sargasso Sea 
  • Dec – Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone

What a reading list! Your book group would be most content following this for the year ahead! Each guide features background information about the author, a publishing history of the title, many illustrations, and thoughtful discussion questions.

I signed on for the Guides last year, and found them most interesting and helpful in facilitating in the several book groups I belong to – I haven’t done all the featured books yet, but each of the monographs is downloadable and you can keep them for future use. The cost for 2019 for all 12 Guides is 40$AU (which is about 30$US, paypal accepted). You can also purchase previous Guides here: https://susannahfullerton.com.au/store/

You can read all about it here: https://susannahfullerton.com.au/come-with-me-on-a-literary-journey/

And visit Susannah’s blog where you shall find all sorts of literary gems: Notes from a Book Addict

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I append this letter direct from Susannah (where she is celebrating a very hot Christmas Down Under…!):

Dear JASNA Member,

I think Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ is the greatest novel ever written. Would you like to find out why I think that, and also learn more about its characters, themes and setting? I’d love to share with you my views on that most gorgeous of heroes, Mr Knightley, and my opinion of Emma herself. Is she really “faultless in spite of all her faults”?

Next year I am offering you not just my thoughts on ‘Emma’, but on 11 other fascinating literary works as well. Please consider joining this exciting literary journey via email. Let me share with you my insights about an author and what drove him or her to create the book. Let me guide you through the novel’s themes and inspirations, tell you about the memorable characters, and provide you with discussion questions to really make you think (or share with your book group).

My 2019 literary series contains an extraordinary short story (you can decide if it is the world’s best?), a book to make you laugh and one to make you cry, some mystery and detection, and some madness and adultery. I have chosen an intriguing mix of works from various parts of the world and from two different centuries. I hope you’ll get the feeling that I’m at your side, sharing my love for a thought-provoking work and discussing it with you and your friends. You can even talk it over directly with me via my website, I always love to hear from JASNA members.

2019 is JASA’s 30th birthday. I hope you will want to celebrate that special anniversary by joining me to discuss ‘Emma’ and other great books. The whole course is done via email, so you do not need to live in Sydney to be a part of it all. Please watch my short film to see just what I’m offering. Find out all about it here: https://susannahfullerton.com.au/come-with-me-on-a-literary-journey/

I hope that Christmas will bring you happy occasions with your family and time to re-read Jane Austen. Don’t forget that if you are planning a visit to Australia next year, JASA would love to welcome you.

Merry Christmas to you all,
Susannah Fullerton
President of JASA

Susannah Fullerton, OAM, FRSN
Literary Lecturer, Author and Literary Tour Leader

Home


President, Jane Austen Society of Australia
Patron, Rudyard Kipling Society of Australia

 
Works:

Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia
Jane Austen & Crime [one of my all-time favorite books on Austen!]
Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’
A Dance with Jane Austen
Jane & I: A Tale of Austen Addiction

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Sign up today – you will be most pleased!

c2018, Jane Austen in Vermont
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Susannah Fullerton on Jane Austen: “Jane & I: A Tale of Austen Addiction”

Susannah Fullerton, president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, has just published her memoir about her life-long love affair with Jane Austen, something many of us can understand and appreciate, but mostly marvel at what Susannah has done with this obsession! Here is Susannah’s blurb on her new book – see below on how you can order it. I for one cannot wait for mine to show up in my mailbox…

 

JANE & I

A TALE OF AUSTEN ADDICTION

By Susannah Fullerton 

You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love … Jane Austen.

When I was a young girl, l was read Pride and Prejudice by my mother. I listened entranced, but little dreamed how that reading would change my life and would be the start of a life-long addiction. For I fell in love with Elizabeth and Darcy, went on to read the other novels of Jane Austen, studied them, re-read them often, lectured about them and wrote about them. As President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia for more than twenty years, I have shared my passion for Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion with thousands of people around the world. As a leader of literary tours, I have taken people to ‘Jane Austen country’. It is thanks to Jane Austen that I developed a career as a popular literary lecturer. Jane Austen, quite simply, altered the course of my life!

My memoir shows how a love of Jane Austen’s novels developed into a passionate addiction, something that I hope all readers of this blog will understand. Jane Austen expert Maggie Lane has called my new book “a vivid and original memoir”, while author Jennifer Kloester has said “More than just a memoir, this delightful account of Susannah Fullerton’s lifelong love of books will enchant, inspire and amuse her readers. A joyful reminder of why books matter.”

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About the author:

Susannah Fullerton has been president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia for 21 years. She is a popular literary tour leader, guiding literary pilgrims in England, Scotland, Ireland, USA, Canada, France and Italy. Previous books include A Dance with Jane Austen, Happily Ever After: Celebrating Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen and Crime (one of my favorite books!), Georgette Heyer: Complete to a Shade, and others. You can find out more about her, her books, and her literary tours at the links below. She also writes a newsletter titled “Notes from a Book Addict,” a monthly treat for your inbox – you can sign up for it here: https://susannahfullerton.com.au/newsletter/

You can order the book here: https://susannahfullerton.com.au/store/jane-i-a-tale-of-austen-addiction/ : [$20 AUD = @ $16. USD + shipping – you can pay via PayPal]

Links:

c2017 Jane Austen in Vermont
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Announcing Giveaway Winner of Susannah Fullerton’s Celebrating ‘Pride and Prejudice’

and the Winner is…

book cover - celebrating P&P- fullerton

Oloore, who commented on January 23 with:

Actually my first experience with P&P ever was watching last 5 minutes of episode 4 in mini series of 1995 when I was 13 or 14. Those 5 minutes intrigued me so much, that I watched all the remaining episodes and then went in search for the original. I remember reading it the same year during my summer vacation. I loved everything about the book, its plot and style, its heros and heroines, and since that time P&P has become the best love story for me: witty, humorous, illustrative of different human characters, satisfying and with wonderful happy end. After P&P I read other works by Jane Austen, and some of them I liked, some of them I liked very much, but P&P was and still remains the best for me.

Congratulations Oloore! – Please send me your contact information [full name, address, phone, email] as soon as you can and I will get the book off to you right away.  So glad you went from the 1995 movie to the book and discovered even more of its treasures!

Again, many thanks to all who commented with their stories of first encountering Pride and Prejudice – an interesting study in itself, and illustrative of the power of this book that so many remember the joys of that first reading! I included all the comments on this post on the Pride and Prejudice anniversary posted on January 28th: you can read all the “first impressions of P&P” from members of JASNA-Vermont here.

And hearty thanks to Susannah Fullerton for joining us, and for writing the book! and to Voyageur Press for generously supplying the giveaway copy!

c2013, Jane Austen in Vermont
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Susannah Fullerton on Celebrating Pride and Prejudice ~ Guest Post and Book Giveaway

Gentle Readers All: Please see below to enter into the Giveaway for a copy of Susannah Fullerton’s Celebrating Pride and Prejudice.

book cover - celebrating P&P- fullerton

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Today I welcome Susannah Fullerton, president of JASA, author of numerous articles on Jane Austen, a leader of literary tours , and author of  Jane Austen and Crime  (2006),  A Dance with Jane Austen (2012), and most recently the author of Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece [Happily Ever After in the UK].

Susannah shares with us a few thoughts on the her new work and the joys of discovering and re-discovering Austen’s most popular novel – and out just in time as we all celebrate the 200th bicentenary of Pride and Prejudice this year, all beginning on January 28th. I highly recommend this book, a must-have for your Austen Library, a perfect companion to the novel, and a lovely work in its own right.

And now Susannah:

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I was about 11 years old when my mother first read me Pride and Prejudice. We were away on a family holiday in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the only thing I remember of the visit there was lying at the end of a double bed while my Mum read aloud. It was not all joy – I did get very frustrated when she stopped to laugh. I was too young to appreciate the irony of the novel and just wanted to know what would happen to Elizabeth and Darcy. Now of course I know exactly why my mother laughed. In spite of my mother’s ‘interruptions’, I loved the story, and soon went back to read it by myself.

pandp_darcy_robertball

Mr Darcy,  by Robert Ball. Pride and Prejudice (Doubleday 1945)
[image from Austenprose.com]

So for just over 40 years Pride and Prejudice has been a vital part of my life. That first reading has been followed by countless others. Sometimes I have just picked up the book and it has fallen open in just the right place (any place is the right place) and I’ve read of the Meryton Ball, or one of Darcy’s proposals, or a scene with Mr Collins making a fool of himself. Even a ‘one page reading’ has always left me feeling better. Again and again I have picked it up and started with that brilliant opening sentence (to which I devote a whole chapter in my book!) and gone through to the end, knowing exactly what would happen but loving it more every single time.

And I have read ‘P & P’ in other ways – I adore unabridged audio versions, I’ve read it as a comic book, I’ve read it on my Kindle, and of course I’ve seen film versions and loved them too. Elizabeth and Darcy are my dear friends and while I would not want to actually meet Mr Collins, I always delight in his company within the pages of Jane Austen’s great novel.

It has been said that you never read the same book twice! Every re-reading is a different experience – you know what is going to happen within the plot and so you look out for other things. And with ‘P & P’ there are always other things – some slight nuance you missed last time you read it, a different inflection by an audio book reader can make you react to a sentence you know well in a different way, and you pick up on the tiny details of setting or character that you failed to notice last time. And the other thing that means you are not reading exactly the same novel, is that you yourself have changed. You have grown older and wiser, experienced things in your own life that have slightly altered you from the person you were on the first reading. I groaned over Mrs Bennet when I first met her – she was so vulgar and embarrassing and I pitied Elizabeth for having to put up with her. But now I’m a mother myself, with children who are forming romantic partnerships, and I have so much more sympathy for Mrs Bennet. And as a wife, I can understand her frustration when Mr Bennet goes off to the library and shuts the door, leaving the worries of 5 unmarried daughters totally up to her. Reading Pride and Prejudice changes your life, but your life also changes each re-reading of Pride and Prejudice.

mrs bennet

With such a deep love of this novel, you can imagine what a joy it was for me to sit down and write a book about its incredible 200 years. I could not think of a nicer way to celebrate this important literary anniversary. For months I was immersed in its pages, learning even more about the book and its characters as I worked on my own book. I was so fascinated by the translations of it – how very quickly it was translated into another language and what a mess was made of that first translation, and what huge challenges it gives a translator (do you think Mr and Mrs Bennet should say ‘vous’ or ‘tu’ to each other in a French translation  – I’d love to hear your opinion?). I especially loved writing my chapter on Elizabeth, trying to analyse what it is that makes her so charming and lovable, while not making her a ‘goody-goody’ in whom we can’t believe. I had lots of fun with my chapter on all the merchandise inspired by this novel – don’t you just love the idea of a BBQ apron that announces ‘Let’s BBQ Wickham!’ And I was fascinated by the responses to ‘P & P’ over 200 years from famous people. A.A. Milne quite rightly judged people by their reactions to this book, while Robert Louis Stevenson wanted to go down on his knees and worship Elizabeth Bennet whenever she opened her mouth.

My book is very gorgeously illustrated and has pictures that may be unfamiliar to many. It is available in two editions – the American edition is Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece and the UK edition is Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I do hope my book gives pleasure to those of you who read it, and also teaches you new things about this much-loved novel.

book cover - happily ever after uk

HAPPY PRIDE AND PREJUDICE ANNIVERSARY YEAR!

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About the Author:

susannah fullertonSusannah Fullerton is President of JASA, and author of Jane Austen – Antipodean Views, Jane Austen and Crime, A Dance with Jane Austen, and her latest Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece – note that the UK title of this work is Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Frances Lincoln, 2012).

 

 

Celebrating Pride and Prejudice
Voyageur Press, January 1, 2013
ISBN-10: 0760344361; ISBN-13: 978-0760344361
$25.99

Contents: (I have abbreviated the title to P&P)

  • ‘My Own Darling Child’- The Writing of P&P
  • ‘A Very Superior Work’ – Reactions to P&P
  • ‘A Truth Universally Acknowledged’ – The Famous First Sentence
  • ‘Bright and Sparkling’ – The Style of P&P
  • ‘As Charming a Creature’ – The Heroine, Elizabeth Bennet
  • ‘Mr Darcy … is the Man!’ – The Hero, Fitzwilliam Darcy
  • ‘The Female Line’ – Her Relations
  • ‘The Same Noble Line’ – His Relations
  • ‘Delighting in the Ridiculous’ – Other Characters
  • P&P Goes Overseas – The Translations
  • ‘Pictures of Perfection’ – Illustrating and Covering P&P
  • Did They Live Happily Ever After? – Sequels and Adaptations
  • Bonnets and Bosoms – Film and Theatrical Versions
  • Mugs and Skateboards – Selling P&P
  • ‘Behold Me Immortal’ – P&P Now and in the Future
  • Bibliography and Index

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Please enter into the drawing for a copy of Celebrating Pride and Prejudice by commenting below: either by asking Susannah a question or telling us of your first experience in reading Pride and Prejudice [or like Susannah, perhaps being read to?].  Deadline is Tuesday January 29, 2013 11:59 pm; winner will be announced on Wednesday January 30th.  Worldwide eligibility. Good luck all, and thank you to the publisher for donating the book for the giveaway [please note that I happily purchased my own copy].

c2013, Jane Austen in Vermont
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All I Want for Christmas? ~ Anything Jane Austen Please! Day 2: Take a Literary Tour with Susannah Fullerton, President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia

I cannot think of a gift I would want more than this! [do hope my caro sposo is paying close attention!]– I had the pleasure of meeting Susannah Fullerton at the JASNA AGM in Brooklyn – she goes above and beyond as the President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia (JASA), has just published A Dance with Jane Austen [she wrote a guest post here], and she has a new book coming out in early 2013 Celebrating Pride and Prejudice (titled Happily Ever After in the UK)

Continue reading →

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Giveaway winner announced ~ A Dance with Jane Austen by Susannah Fullerton!

Giveaway winner for Susannah Fullerton’s A Dance with Jane Austen: How a Novelist and Her Characters went to the Ball is Diana Birchall! – she wrote this on November 3:

I love Susannah’s writing, and I have long been a great admirer of her awe-inspiring range of abilities.  That is why I cast her as “my Marianne”!  I must and shall own this book, but they ran out of them at the AGM, and I haven’t got mine yet.  I just won a fabulous biography of Keats on the Dovegreyreader blog, and my mother-in-law’s electricity got restored in NYC today, so let’s make it good luck comes in threes.  Please enter me to win Susannah’s book!

Congratulations Diana – luck comes in threes indeed! And the fact you cast Susannah in your play as “Marianne” makes this even sweeter – I promise a completely objective random drawing [you can thank my husband who picks a number from 1-whatever in order of posting – he doesn’t even know what I am asking for!]

Please email me privately with postal direction!

Thank you all for such wonderful responses, to Susannah for her lovely post and responses, and to Sue Forgue, my go-to person for all things Regency (and London!) for her dance information!  For those of you who will be attending the JASNA-Vermont Tea on December 2nd, this book will be one of the door prizes, with thanks again to the publisher Frances Lincoln for their generosity.

c2012 Jane Austen in Vermont
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Guest post: Susannah Fullerton on her A Dance with Jane Austen and book giveaway!

The AGM in Brooklyn brought many pleasures, and one of the most pleasurable was meeting and talking with Susannah Fullerton.  I have long been an admirer – she is the President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia and a quick perusal of their website shows the extent of what she and her organization do, from annual meetings to conferences and the JASA publications Sensibilities and The JASA Chronicle.  Susannah also leads a number of literary tours for ASA Cultural Tours  [Australians Studying Abroad], and lectures on Austen around the world. And I must add that she was perfectly cast as the close-to-hysterical Marianne in the “Austen Assizes” script by Diana Birchall and Syrie James staged in Brooklyn!

Susannah has written many articles and a few books, one on which remains an all-time favorite, Jane Austen and Crime (Jones Books, 2004), wherein Ms. Fullerton gives us the real world that Jane Austen alludes to in all her works, the realities of such pieces in the narrative as Willoughby as serial seducer, Lydia’s “elopement,” and even the gypsies in Emma.  In her newest work, A Dance with Jane Austen: How a Novelist and her Characters went to the Ball (London: Frances Lincoln, 2012), Fullerton offers up the same detailed analysis of what Austen so off-handedly tells us, most of which we don’t quite “get” as 21st-century readers – the dressing for the dance, getting to the Ball, the various types of balls, proper etiquette, the music, the conversation, the Men! – all of it to enhance our understanding of Austen’s time and therefore her stories…

I have asked Susannah to join us today to tell us a little about her book, and her publisher has generously offered a copy for a giveaway – please see the information below on entering to win!

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SF:  Some years ago I was having dinner with Joan Strasbaugh of Jones Books, the publishing firm which had brought out the American edition of my book Jane Austen and Crime, when Joan suggested that a book that really needed to be written was a book about Jane Austen and Dance. I was taken aback for a moment! Surely, with dances playing such a vital role in Jane Austen’s fiction, that subject had already been covered. But when I stopped to think, I realised it had not. Many Austen scholars have written about her dance scenes as part of other works, but there was no one book devoted entirely to that subject, a book that explored the social etiquette of the ballroom, the vital role dance played in courtship, the suppers served and the music played. Would I be interested, Joan asked, because if so, she could recommend the project to Frances Lincoln UK Ltd. And so I started writing.

image: Republic of Pemberley

What I wanted to do, I decided, was to follow Jane Austen’s characters to a ball. Had I been Jane or Elizabeth Bennet, what would the whole process of going to a dance have involved? How did a heroine get to a ball in the first place if her family had no carriage (the case for Emma Watson), how did she dress for the occasion, what rules governed her behaviour while there, and what differences did she find between assembly balls and private balls? When she stood up with a young man, what were the possibilities for flirtation and courtship, and how does Jane Austen show this happening with Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingley, Emma and Mr Knightley, Catherine and Henry, Marianne and Willoughby, when they are dancing with each other? Poor Fanny Price suffers the day after the Mansfield ball when she has no suitable confidante with whom to talk it all over, but for luckier young ladies often the ‘post-ball discussion’ was almost as much fun as the event itself.

Jane Austen loved to put on her satin slippers and go off to dance. In my book I wanted to provide information about the balls she attended, from the Basingstoke assemblies of her youth when she danced happily with neighbours and family friends, to the later balls where she chaperoned nieces and preferred to sit by the fire with a glass of wine rather than dance. She too enjoyed courtship in a ballroom when she danced with Tom Lefroy; she too knew the excitement of being asked by the right man, and the challenges of avoiding the wrong one.

As I wrote my book I discovered patterns in Jane Austen’s use of dances in her fiction. Several of the novels have one informal dance and one more formal one, and she uses each to progress her themes, characterisation and relationships. In some novels what happens is romantic, as is the case when Darcy and Elizabeth are partners and you can almost see the sparks between them, but in Mansfield Park everyone always seems to be dancing with the wrong person and balls in that novel illustrate selfishness, not romance. Jane Austen makes a great deal happen at a ball!

image: Brock illus Mansfield Park, Mollands

A Dance with Jane Austen is beautifully illustrated with contemporary pictures or illustrations from the novels. I include a brief chapter about dances in the film versions, but decided not to make this extensive because so often film-makers get it wrong and put in a dance, such as Mr Beveridge’s Maggot, which Jane Austen would not have danced. However, there are some lovely pictures from some of the movies that I chose to include.

For the past 17 years I have served as President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia. In that time I have lectured extensively about Jane Austen and her works, and have seen the joy that her books give to readers around the world. I hope that my book will increase the enjoyment of those readers by taking them into the ballrooms to discover that there is “nothing like dancing after all.”

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JAIV: One question I would ask Susannah is ‘What is your favorite dance scene in a Jane Austen novel and why?’

SF:  My favorite dance scene is the Crown Inn ball in Emma. This is the evening when Emma first starts to view Mr. Knightley as an attractive male, rather than as an old friend and family connection. She watches his “erect” figure move about the room, sees him rescue Harriet Smith from the embarrassment of being rejected as a dance partner, prods him into asking her to dance with him, and can hardly take her eyes off him all night! Jane Austen achieves so much in all her dance scenes – she gives a sense of a full community of living people, progresses courtships, reveals character and shows faults and foibles – but this scene is particularly rich. The moment when Emma reminds Mr. Knightley that they are “not really so much brother and sister as to make (dancing together) at all improper” and he replies “Brother and sister! No, indeed!” is one of the most erotic moments in all of Jane Austen’s fiction. It thrills me every time!

image: theloiterer.org

Oh I agree – I love this scene! Thank you so much Susannah for sharing your love of Jane Austen and dance with us!

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Gentle Readers!  please ask any question you might have for Susannah Fullerton or post a comment here and you will be entered into the random drawing for a copy of A Dance with Jane Austen. Please do so by 11:59 pm, Sunday November 4th, 2012. Winner will be announced on Monday Nov. 5th – Worldwide eligibility!

For a review of the book, please visit:

About the author: 

Susannah Fullerton is President of JASA, and author of Jane Austen – Antipodean Views, Jane Austen and Crime and the forthcoming Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Masterpiece (due out Jan. 2013) – note that the UK title of this work is Happily Ever After: Celebrating Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

A Dance with Jane Austen
Frances Lincoln, October 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0711232457

Upcoming book: (Feb. 2013)

US edition title and cover

UK edition title and cover

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The JASNA 2012 AGM in Brooklyn ~ Part I: My Jane Austen Book Stash

I have not gone missing, though it may seem that indeed I have fallen off the planet – not quite so dramatic though it does almost feel like that – we have sold our house and amidst the joys of house packing, packing up my book business – all gone to storage as we do not have a place to call home – concerns about my son’s surgery, a September 23rd JASNA-Vermont event of grandiose proportions [three speakers, a fabulous afternoon!], and then off to the JASNA AGM in Brooklyn – a lovely respite into the late 18th century from which I am still fighting re-entry!  I was hoping to post about the AGM right away and fear I am slowly forgetting about all the fabulous events of Jane Austen Land in Brooklyn – but I shall start today with a booklist of new purchases – the Emporium filled with goodies as usual – and though the lack of a home and the memory of packing all those books forced me into more conservative behavior at the book stalls, I confess that book buying is my only true vice and I could not completely resist, so here are the latest additions to my Jane Austen library:!

Maggie Lane. Understanding Austen: Key Concepts in the Six Novels. London: Robert Hale, 2012.  ISBN: 978-0-7090-9078-6

Lane has written a number of Austen-related texts and this book will be a most welcome addition to my collection of her other works. Her essays in Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine are always insightful, often just focusing on a single term and how Austen employs it [for example in the Mar / April 2011 issue, she takes on Austen’s concept of “home”] – in this book, Lane delineates Austen’s 18th century language, clarifying for the reader the meanings of such words as “elegance” and “openness” to “candour” and “gentility” and “mind” and “spirit” – a lively entry into Austen’s world that adds to our understanding and appreciation of what she was really saying to her readers…

Devoney Looser. British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. ISBN: 0-8018-6448-8

Ashamed to say I do not have this in my collection – so happy to remedy that with this discussion of Lady Hutchinson, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Charlotte Lennox, Catharine Macaulay, Hester Lynch Piozzi, and Jane Austen and their historically-informed writings… perfect winter reading…

James Fordyce. Sermons to Young Women. Introduction by Susan Allen Ford. Chawton: Chawton House Press, 2012.
ISBN: 978-1-907254-07-9

One of the best-selling conduct books of Jane Austen’s day, Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women we mostly know as the reading material of the odious Mr. Collins, the words of which Lydia Bennet patently ignored… This is a paperback facsimile of the 10th edition from the Chawton House Library collection, and necessary reading material if one is to understand the world that Jane Austen was writing in – we might laugh at some of the directives for female behavior now and think we indeed have “come a long way baby” – but read it we must to truly “get” Austen… purchase supports the Chawton House Library, and as Susan Allen Ford, JASNA’s intrepid Persuasions editor, has written the introduction, one should just add this to their shelves without further ado…

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Janine Barchas. Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2012.  ISBN: 978-1-4214-0640-4

“Janine Barchas makes the bold assertion that Jane Austen’s novels allude to actual high-profile politicians and contemporary celebrities as well as to famous historical figures and landed estates…the first scholar to conduct extensive research into the names and locations in Austen’s fiction by taking full advantage of the explosion of archival materials now available online.” [from the jacket]

I had the pleasure of introducing Professor Barchas at her AGM presentation on “Jane Austen Between the Covers: A Brief History of Book Cover Art.” She took us through the last 200 years of marketing Jane Austen through the physical aspect of the book, a long-term project she is working on to create a visual bibliography of Austen’s works.  Barchas has given a number of breakout sessions at the past AGMs, always incorporating the graphic and visual aspects of Austen’s world and tying them to her fiction.  I am most anxious to read her newest work, and can heartily recommend it…

Claudia L. Johnson. Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures.  Chicago: U Chicago P, 2012.  ISBN: 978-0-226-40203-1

Also another must-have for your Austen collection… Johnson “shows us how Jane Austen became ‘Jane Austen,’ an exalted yet seemingly ordinary figure… [by passing] through the four critical phases of Austen’s reception: the Victorian era, the First and Second World Wars, and the establishment of the Austen House and Museum in 1949…” [from the jacket]

Elizabeth Aldrich. From the Ballroom to Hell: Grace and Folly in Nineteenth-Century Dance.  Evanston: Northwester UP, 1991.  ISBN: 0-8101-0913-1

This book went into a second printing in 2000, so very happy to pick it up. It offers up “a collection of over 100 little-known excerpts from dance, etiquette, beauty , and fashion manuals from roughly 1800-1890, to include step-by-step instructions for performing the various dances, as well as musical scores, costume patterns,  and the proper way to hold one’s posture, fork, gloves, and fan…”

Hazel Jones and Maggie Lane. Celebrating Pride and Prejudice: 200 Years of Jane Austen’s Darling Child.  Bath: Lansdown Media, 2012.  ISBN: 978-0-9573570-0-6

A compact, illustration-filled tribute to P&P, as Jones and Lane “investigate the reasons for its popularity and describe the extraordinary history, reception and afterlife of the phenomenon that is Pride and Prejudice.” [from the back cover].  I was fortunate enough to be purchasing this from publisher Tim Bullamore just as Maggie Lane was at the Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine table – so having it signed by both authors is an additional treat! – and Colin Firth graces the cover, so who could resist!

Sarah Emsley, ed. Jane Austen and the North Atlantic: Essays from the 2005 Jane Austen Society Conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.  Jane Austen Society, 2006. ISBN: 0-9538174-7-4

I had wanted to go to this conference but was alas! unable to, so happy to pick up this collection of four essays – have meant to since 2006 when it was first published…

The Jane Austen Companion to Love. Naperville: Sourcebooks, 2009.  ISBN:  978-1-4022-4016-4

This was a lovely gift from Sourcebooks in our AGM bag of goodies…. Filled with quotes from the novels and illustrations by the two Brock brothers – a perfect bedside book…and gift for your favorite Austen-loving friend.

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Several books highlighted at the AGM I already have, so shall give them a mention here as well:

Ava Farmer, a.k.a. Sandy Lerner. Second Impressions.  Chawton House Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-1-61364-750-9

Ms. Lerner was at the AGM as a plenary speaker – her talk “Money Now and Then: Has Anything Changed?” – was an interesting analysis of whether Jane Austen was knowledgeable about the issue of money in her novels – will write more about this in another post – but want to mention her book here – she will be coming to Vermont in December to speak at our annual birthday Tea! – and her book will be available for sale, all profits to support Chawton House Library. You can visit the book’s website here: http://www.secondimpressions.us/

Susannah Fullerton. A Dance with Jane Austen: How a Novelist and her Characters went to the Ball.  London: Frances Lincoln, 2012.  ISBN:  978-0-7112-3245-7

A delight to meet and chat with Susannah, the president of JASA, and author also of Jane Austen and Crime, one of my favorite books on Austen.  Here Susannah takes on the Regency ballroom, filled with beautiful contemporary illustrations, and everything you wanted to know about Dance!

Juliette Wells. Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination.  New York: Continuum, 2011.  ISBN:  9781441145543

Nearly done with this one – and another must-have for your Austen library: “An investigation of Jane Austen’s popular significance today – why Austen matters to readers, how they make use of her novels, what they gain from visiting places associated with her, and why they create works of fiction and nonfiction inspired by her novels and life.” [from the back cover]

William Deresiewicz. A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter.  New York: Penguin, 2011.

Deresiewicz spoke the evening of the Ball on “Becoming a Hero: Being a Man in Austen’s World” – his book is a delightful journey through the six novels and how his reading of them made him a better man…

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Used Books? – my real downfall, but I only bought two items from the used bookseller Traveler’s Tales, where I usually drop a bit more blunt – I didn’t get to the booth until a few days after the Emporium opened and most items of interest were already gone… but I did find this:

John Gloag. Georgian Grace: A Social History of Design from 1600 to 1830. London: Spring Books, 1967, c1956. – a must have for anyone interested in the architecture and decorative arts of the period – who can resist a book with chapters such as “‘A Dish of Tea’” and “Pray be seated” and “‘The toilet stands dispay’d’” and the like!

And this, a Rowlandson print – you must visit the Jane Austen’s World blog where Vic [my delightful roommate!] shares her purchase of FOUR of these Rowlandson prints!

Here is my one and only: “The Harvest Home” by Thomas Rowlandson (1821)

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…and last but not least, my favorite annual purchase at the AGMs is the Wisconsin Region’s “A Year with Jane Austen” Calender, this for 2013 a celebration of Pride and Prejudice: you can order your own copy here: http://www.jasna.org/merchandise/calendar-2013.html [I purchased a number to sell at our JASNA-Vermont Austen Boutique…]

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More to come about the AGM so stay tuned!

c2012 Jane Austen in Vermont
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Susannah Fullerton on Jane Austen and Crime ~ An Audio Lesson

The ABC Sydney, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has posted online its weekly “Self-Improvement Wednesday.”  This week’s lesson is an 11 minute chat on “Jane Austen’s  Crime” with Susannah Fullerton, the JASA President and author of the fabulous Jane Austen & Crime.

You can listen to the audio and then take the quiz to test your retention skills here:  http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/05/04/3207499.htm?site=sydney

Enjoy this very quick and entertaining run through all the possible crimes in Georgian England as seen in Austen’s writings:  adultery and crim con, dueling, prostitution, murder, elopement, rape, theft, smuggling, gaming, and the various punishments.  Better yet, read the book! [you can read my review here.]

Copyright @2011 by Deb Barnum, of Jane Austen in Vermont
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Book Review ~ Jane Austen & Crime

Jane Austen & Crime, by Susannah Fullerton.  3rd edition.  Jones Books, 2006 [Fullerton is the President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia]

ja-crime-coverA new approach to Jane Austen seemed impossible, but Susannah Fullerton . . . has brilliantly hit on the theme of crime and punishment in Austen. Fullerton shows how the Regency world . . . was really a dangerous place with a fast rising crime rate and a legal system that handed out ferocious sentences. Her book will be essential reading for every Janeite.”-Claire Tomalin, author of Jane Austen: A Life

 

 

 

I admit to passing over this book when it was first available – somehow, I just didn’t want to sully my love of Austen and the “pictures of perfection” the world of her novels presents.  One knows, of course, that it is there, lurking behind the scenes, with a brief reference here, or a shady character there; and as readers of Jane Austen know, these references would have been better understood by her contemporaries than by us today, unless we are well-versed in the social history of Georgian and Regency England.

My interest peaked with my recent absorption in several detective novels set in the Regency period (the Julian Kestrel series by Kate Ross) –  these mysteries evoke the time beautifully – the lovely clothes, the balls, the always proper social behaviors – but also the underbelly of this world – the crime, the poverty, the seedy desperate lives, the world that Dickens and his characters inhabited. Indeed there are many non-fiction books on this subject, just on London alone [see below for further reading], but I turned to Fullerton’s book to get not only a quick overview of the crime of the time, but to see it in the context of Jane Austen’s life and works.  As Fullerton begins:

 Why Jane Austen and Crime?  Why the juxtaposition of these seemingly disparate concepts? Simply put, because the relationship is there. Crimes against human life, crimes against property, crimes of passion, social crimes, grim punishments, and even fictional (Gothic) crime were very much a part of the Georgian world.  Ever the perceptive observer of her society, Jane Austen does indeed include comments on crime and the effects of crime in her letters, in her juvenilia and, treated very differently, in her mature novels.  An examination of crime in Jane Austen’s world and fiction suggests many new perceptions of her work and gives a greater understanding of her genius. [p.3]

And Fullerton ends with:

 Jane Austen was not a reformer.  She suggests no solution to these problems.  Rather she was a highly perceptive observer of her society who commented incisively on the behaviour of men and women.  She included criminal behavior in her works and she included punishment even, if unlike Dickens, she never made crime the climax of her story or chose a prison as the setting for a novel.  She was aware of the confused laws which governed the Georgian age, she knew of the debates concerning the softening or abolishing of these laws, she wove her knowledge into the fabric of her writing.  Crime became a part of her plots, crime revealed character, crime emphasized duty and responsibility, and crime even united some of the heroines and heroes.  She examined the inclination to do evil, analysed the faulty propensity which drives a man to wrong-doing, depicted the damage cause by doing wrong and described criminal feelings in her characters.  In doing so she reflected and commented on the Georgian criminal scene with accuracy and sharp intelligence.  [p. 217]

And in between, Fullerton neatly presents the subject in fine organized fashion:

  • Crime against life (murder and suicide)
  • Crime against property (theft)
  • Crimes of passion (adultery, elopement, prostitution, rape, bastards)
  • Social crime (duelling, poaching, smuggling, gaming)
  • Gothic crime
  • Punishment and the law (gaols, hanging, other punishments, men of the law)

Within each section, the subject is analyzed in its historical context with many factual references to the laws and the notable crimes of the time, then in the context of Austen’s life; for example, her Aunt Leigh Perrot on trial for theft; her brother Edward Knight a magistrate at Godmerhsam.  Fullerton then takes us through the novels and letters to show by example how any specific crime drives the plot or shapes a character – we see John Dashwood clearly painted as the thief he is; Willoughby as a serial seducer; the gravity of Wickham’s intended “elopement” with Georgiana and the actual with Lydia; even Mrs. Norris’s petty thefts, rather glossed over in Mansfield Park, but there for the close reader to see;  we learn that Harriet Smith’s talking to the gypsies in Emma was actually a crime punishable by death by hanging!; how the theft of the chickens in Emma, actually brings about the marriage of Emma and Knightley; the smuggling of tea and other luxuries, a crime more serious than murder [London tea smugglers operated in gangs of up to 50!, and most of London enjoyed this favored beverage in its smuggled form [p. 142], certainly Jane loved her tea as did many of her characters]; the very brief reference to Brandon’s duelling with Willoughby in Sense & Sensibility, so deftly written by Austen that we barely know of it:  “We met by appointment, he to defend, I to punish his conduct.”  [Fullerton points out that with this one sentence, Brandon becomes the only one of Austen’s heroes to engage in criminal activity. [p.124]].  We see Emma’s slight of Miss Bates as more than just an uncomfortable rudeness, but really a crime of bad manners, a wickedness [p.217] on Emma’s part that tells us more about her than almost anything else in the book – it is the turning point in the story when Emma finally sees herself.  And what of John Thorpe?- his lies and holding Catherine in his carriage against her will; the issues of adultery and imprisonment in Mansfield Park; the gaming laws that allowed only the wealthy to own sporting dogs, as John Middleton and Mr. Darcy.  The list goes on with these references, some obvious, some mere mention, Fullerton pulling it all together, and by giving us a better understanding of the contemporary social and moral expectations, we better understand what Austen was speaking of…

 

”]The three villains in horsemen's greatcoats [Thomson, NA]I most appreciated Fullerton’s many references to the juvenilia – it is in these works that Austen shows us the realities of her greater society, all indeed presented in an exaggerated manner with her youthful humor, but we do see how she understood this underside of life in both London and her country villages, a knowledge also apparent in the quick, short references in her letters.  For instance, in this short passage from Letter 95 [Le Faye, p. 248], Austen writes her sister from Godmersham Park:

 

Edward and I had a delightful morn for our drive there…. He went to inspect the Gaol, as a visiting Magistrate, & took me with him. – I was gratified – & went through all the feelings which People must go through I think in visiting such a Building.” 

Austen then goes on to talk of shopping and a party, etc., but what did she actually SEE on that visit, and how frustrating she tells no more!  Here Fullerton gives us what Jane doesn’t – she explains exactly what the Canterbury Gaol would have been like, exactly what Austen would have experienced. Austen’s reference to being “gratified” takes us back to the juvenilia where crimes are everywhere, punishment handily doled out, all in high humor.

 I highly recommend this book –  with all the factual references linked so well to Austen’s world, the many contemporary illustrations, helpful notes and bibliography aside – it is actually a fabulous and entertaining read!  This is not a long book or a great scholarly analysis of Austen and how crime figures in her works, but the interweaving of the laws of the day, real crimes and punishments, with the innumerable references to the fiction and letters, some so easy to miss on a casual reading, all this gives us a heightened awareness of how while Austen seems to present a nearly perfect social order on a very tiny scale, that not far behind the scene are some very serious worldly concerns, frighteningly real and not so pretty. 

Thomas Rowlandson - The Duel

Thomas Rowlandson - The Duel

 5 Full inkwells (out of 5)

The book is available from Jones Books.  However, the JASNA-Vermont Chapter has several copies for sale, so, if you would like to support our local group, please contact us directly.

 Further Reading:

Fullterton provides a bibliography on the many aspects of crime of the period.  I list here only a few:

  1. Bovill, E.W.  English Country Life: 1780-1830 [Oxford, 1962]
  2. Collins, Philip.  Dickens and Crime [Macmillan, 1962]
  3. Emsley, Clive.  Crime and Society in England 1750-1900[ Longman 1987]
  4. Harvey, A.D.  Sex in Georgian England [St Martin’s, 1994]
  5. Hibbert, Christopher. Highwaymen[Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967]
  6. Ives, Sidney.  The Trial of Mrs. Leigh Perrot [Stinehour, 1980]
  7. Low, Donald.  The Regency Underworld [Sutton, 1999]
  8. McLynn, Frank.  Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth Century England [Routledge, 1989]
  9. Murray, Venetia.  An Elegant Madness:  High Society in Regency England [Viking, 1999]; published as High Society: A Social History of the Regency Period 1788-1830 in the UK in 1998]
  10. Picard, Liza.  Dr. Johnson’s London [St. Martin’s, 2002]
  11. Sinclair, Olga.  Gretna Green: A Romantic History [Chivers, 1989]

Online references: