I have a mix of tidbits I have been gathering over the past week or so, awaiting a moment to post them…so apologies for late news or repeated items!

*Visit the Joanna Waugh blog: Ms. Waugh, author of regency historicals [the latest is Blind Fortune] has several posts on the Christrmas traditions during the Regency period

*A lovely post on Idolising Jane about Unacceptable Proposals, ending with a fine analysis of the Knightley – Emma proposal scene

*Persuasions On-line [Winter 2008, Vol.29, No. 1] has published one of the talks from the Chicago AGM that I had attended that was quite interesting:  “From Cover to Cover: Packaging Jane Austen from Egerton to Kindle” by Deirdre Gilbert, a discussion of the various covers and cover art that have housed Austen through the years.

*A new blog lately discovered: the Nature Diary of Colonel Brandon . Visit and enjoy!… written by “Colonel Brandon:”  “Perhaps, it is true, I am the kind of man whom everybody speaks well of & nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see & nobody remembers”…. but he has wonderful posts on nature and writing and is an ardent lover of Jane Austen!

*Ellen Moody’s article on Jane Austen’s Heroes has been posted on the Jane Austen Centre’s Online Magazine site [and check out the site for other articles of note…]

*A Regency needlework map of England and Wales, circa 1820 is for sale at auction at Christies London January 20-21 [to bid online click here]

*JASNA has announced that “The Beautiful Cassandra: the pictures, the music, the dance by Juliet McMaster et al from the Chicago AGM is now available on the JASNA.org site.

The Father, by Juliet McMaster

*A new edition of a book on London:  Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay and John Keay, editors  THE LONDON ENCYCLOPAEDIA
Completely revised third edition, 1,101pp. Pan Macmillan. £50 (US $99.50) [978 1 4050 4924 5]  [see this article in the Times online “Surveying London” by Rosemary Ashton]

See Visual Arts Book Reviews   for a review of Enchanted Lives, Enchanted Objects: American Women Collectors and the Making of American Culture, 1800-1940. By Dianne Sachko Macleod. Berkeley: University of California Press, September 2008. Cloth: ISBN 978-0-520-23729-2, $45.00

*My JAIV co-hort Janeite Kelly has just posted on a book “A Lady of Fashion: Barbara Johnson’s Album of Style and Fabrics” [1987] on her other blog Two Teens in the Time of Austen ~ a great find Kelly!

And of course, you must visit the “usual suspects” for the always entertaining and informative Austen-related blog posts ~ so many this week about the holidays, etc…

• Austenblog
• Austenprose
• Jane Austen’s World
• Jane Austen Today
• Becoming Jane