The Penny Post Weekly Review

27 January 2012

News /Gossip:

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:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/20/first-sexual-revolution?newsfeed=true

-and you might also like to read this essay by  Tony Perrottet on “Guidebooks to Babylon” – note the references to “Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies”:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/books/review/guidebooks-to-babylon.html?pagewanted=all

-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:

http://www.hallierubenhold.com/my-books/55-the-covent-garden-ladies-pimp-general-jack-a-the-extraordinary-story-of-harriss-list.html

Oh dear, what would Jane say!

Downton Abbey  ~ like Dickens, DA now has its own category!

*Downton Abbey, the house as the real star of the show:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418569

*This article on “The Literary Pedigree of Downton Abbey” will give you several books to add to your TBR pile:
http://www.themillions.com/2012/01/the-literary-pedigree-of-downton-abbey.html

*as will this post from JASNA-New Jersey that lists several booklists out there: 
http://cnjjasna.blogspot.com/2012/01/downton-abbey-reading-list.html

*and a visit to the Masterpiece website will give you stories to read, polls to take and videos to view:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/downtonabbey/

countdown to next show [for those counting!]: 2 days and 7 hours…

Now back to Jane Austen!

“Discovering Austen: A One-Woman Show”:

 http://www.libraryasincubatorproject.org/?p=2553

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).

The Circulating Library:

*An article about unfinished books like Dickens’ Edwin Drood and Austen’s Sanditon:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=418771&c=2

[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…

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/123849

*Romanticism Redefined: Pickering & Chatto and The Wordsworth Circle
from the Alexander Street Press – check if your local academic or public library will be subscribing to this online resource:
http://alexanderstreet.com/products/romanticism-redefined-pickering-chatto-and-wordsworth-circle

-And read this review in Library Journal:
http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2012/01/reference/romanticism-redefined/

*The Victorian Newsletter: http://www.wku.edu/victorian/index.php

*The British Newspaper Archive: http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

•           Books I am Looking Forward to

*as a great advocate of the importance of re-reading, especially Jane Austen, I am happy to add this to my TBRimmediately pile:

Patrica Meyers Spacks,  On Re-Reading:

 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?recid=31296 , which includes a video interview with the author:

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.

-and a review here: http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/arts/on-further-review-finding-value-in-rereading-books-an3qem9-137781373.html

and here at Austenprose: http://austenprose.com/2012/01/21/on-rereading-by-patricia-meyer-spacks-a-review/

*Just in time for Valentine’s Day:  Jane Austen on Love and Romance, edited by Constance Moore:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161608345X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=phillyburbs-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=161608345X

*Simon Dickie: Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century.   U Chicago P, 2011. [love the cover!]

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo11913215.html

with a review here: http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/In-Brief/Cruelty-amp-Laughter/ba-p/6577

*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.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674065680

*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

http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Austenland-Novel-Shannon-Hale/dp/1608196259/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327680403&sr=1-1

* Posh Pocket Jane Austen – 100 Puzzles and Quizzes by the Puzzle Society – due on April 12, 2012

         http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/products/?isbn=1449401236

*What Austen’s Sense and Sensibility can teach us about Love and Courtship“, at The Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/20/virgil-jane-austen-and-other-authors-can-teach-us-about-love.html

*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

You can learn more about this event in the US here: http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/

*On my bedside table?: reading Bleak House, finally…

Websites and Blogs worth a look:

*“Sense and Sensibility in the Dining Room of Chawton Cottage”: by Julie Wakefield
http://janeaustenshousemuseumblog.com/2012/01/22/the-sense-and-sensibility-display-in-the-dining-room/

Austen in Academia:

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

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/shelf_lives/

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!

article here: http://www.finebooksmagazine.com/fine_books_blog/2012/01/four-centuries-of-collectors-at-cambridge.phtml

*At the The Folger Shakespeare Library, from Feb 3- May 20, 2012:
Shakespeare’s Sisters: Voices of English and European Women Writers, 1500-1700

http://www.folger.edu/woSummary.cfm?woid=721

Auction News:

Always on the lookout for London materials:

Sotheby’s London November 15, 2011: Lot 14

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

Regency Life

•           Fashion

A little later than our time, but here is an interesting blog post on “Women, Fashion and Frivolity” at the Darwin and Gender blog:
http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/gender/2012/01/06/women-fashion-and-frivolity/

-Note this quote by George Darwin:

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? ]

Here is the full text of George Darwin’s 1872 writing on Development in Dress
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A570&pageseq=1

General History:

*this is fabulous! Postcards of Queen Elizabeth through the ages at Financial Times online:  http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/34f15e78-3c0c-11e1-bb39-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1kFQt7sIb

[when there scroll down to view the slideshow]

[image: with thanks to Nerdy Girls!]

Charles Dickens: – he’s everywhere!

*Dickens in pictures at the Telegraph :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/charles-dickens/8954312/Charles-Dickens-in-pictures.html

*A tour of Dickens birthplace:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/8947295/A-tour-around-the-house-where-Charles-Dickens-was-born.html

*“Celebrating Mr. Dickens” a symposium at the Universityof Delaware, February18, 2012: http://www.udconnection.com/saturdaysymposium

*“Dickens in Lowell”: an exhibit [opens March 30, 2012] ,and symposium celebrating Dickens’s historic visit to Lowell, Massachusettsin 1842 – http://www.uml.edu/conferences/dickens-in-lowell/

*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:

http://calendar.yale.edu/cal/ycba/week/20120123/All/CAL-2c9cb3cc-333ca412-0134-477237d9-00000988bedework@yale.edu/

- followed by The Pickwick Papers, from 1952: http://calendar.yale.edu/cal/ycba/week/20120123/All/CAL-2c9cb3cc-333ca412-0134-477bda0c-00000991bedework@yale.edu/

*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

Shopping:

from Flourishcafe at Esty.com

For Fun:

*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:

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?parent_id=452639&word=

 [with thanks to JASNA-New Jersey for the link]

Specific Material Type: Photomechanical prints
Source: [Cigarette cards.] / Celebrities of British history : a series of 50
Location: Stephen A. Schwarzman Building/ George Arents Collection

*Found this on the Cotswold History blog: http://www.cotswoldhistory.com

http://www.cotswoldhistory.com/2012/01/life-is-like-a-jane-austen-novel/

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.

*A reminder that the website for the Jane Austen Centre in Bath has a section on Music Videos: http://www.janeausten.co.uk/the-jane-austen-centre/jane-austen-videos/the-music-videos/

Watch them all and choose your favorite [very hard to do!]

Copyright @2012, Jane Austen in Vermont

Here is the schedule - and note the special ‘in character’ weekend scheduled for August 10-12, 2012 – who might you like to be? – Emma Woodhouse or Miss Bates?? or do you dare to take on Frank Churchill?? Join the fun if you can!

Series 5: Emma

January 27 – 29, 2012

August 3 – 4, 2012

September 7 – 9, 2012

January 11 – 13, 2013

Series 6: Pride and Prejudice

January 25 – 17, 2013
(other dates to be announced)

******************

Special Weekend in Character

August 10 – 12, 2012

Call or E-mail for reservations and / or information:
http://www.OneHundredMain.com
802 888-6888
info@OneHundredMain.com

 [images from the Governor's House website, used with permission]

Copyright @2012 Jane Austen in Vermont

The game for 2-6 players, age 13 and up, costs $24.95 – a tad steep for a card game, but you should play the demonstration game  and see if it seems worth a dive into your pocket-book – the pictures are generally appealing, though Mr. Darcy seems sadly lacking [where is Colin Firth when we need him?]

 [sorry, this has nothing to do with the cards - but who can resist this picture! - with thanks to Vic at Jane Austen Today for sharing this luscious shot!]

Well, back to the game – I have just spent a few minutes with the demo and need to give it more time to pass any sort of judgment – right now I am a bit befuddled! – one needs perhaps to buy it just to see what it is all about! – I do think it might be a perfect choice for the next game night of our budding co-ed book group – but take a look and see what you think – and let me know!

And an invitation from the publisher:

If you are near the Bay Area of California you might be interested in our upcoming game night.  On Saturday, February 4th at 5:30 PM we will be serving tea with a traditional menu provided by a local caterer.  Along with the tea service will be a chance to mingle in our elegant showroom and play the game.  Period attire is admired but not required.  For more information, and reservations please see our website.  http://www.lumenaris.com/event_games.html 

The Lumenaris  Group, Inc
18675 Adams Ct. Suite H
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
Phone: 408-591-4034 

Website: http://www.lumenaris.com/suitors.html

And check out the other games offered – there are various puzzles, from easy to very difficult – for starters, you might be interested in this fashion puzzle!

 [all images from Lumenaris.com, with the exception of Mr. Firth]

Copyright @2012 Jane Austen in Vermont  

The Jane Austen Society of South Carolina

Cordially invites you to

Jane Austen’s Annual Birthday Tea!

to be held

at 1:30 p.m. on January 21, 2012

at Gage Hall of the Unitarian Church
4, Archdale Street, Charleston,SC

****************

Tea and Refreshments will be served,

To be followed by bright and breezy Regency entertainment by

Mrs. Jane Povey

Admission: $12 non-members; $6 members 

[Image from: alwaysfoodie.com]

The Penny Post Weekly Review

5 January 2012

Well, first a very Happy New Year to one and all!! – I have been away from my computer, and find some of my gathered “news” is no longer actually new, so I include here just some goodies discovered on the internet, a good number only peripherally related to Jane, but interesting nonetheless… [or so I believe...]

News /Gossip 

* How about taking a Jane Austen Cruise?! This coming July, you can head from Southampton to Guernsey, Spain and France for an 8-day cruise filled with all manner of Jane Austen diversions - http://janeaustencruise.com/

* Steventon remains unearthed!: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-16002088 

* At the Huffington Post, Deirdre Le Faye on Jane Austen’s Letters – “9 Facts You Didn’t Know”:
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deirdre-le-faye/jane-austen-letters_b_1153966.html?mid=555

* The Amanda Vickery broadcast of The Many Lovers of Jane Austen may have only aired in the UK, but we can view it here, with thanks to Diana Birchall for sending me the video link:

http://www.videozer.com/video/R5mHMAS?mid=56427

You might also like to check in at Jane Austen’s Regency World blog to see a review of the show by Tony Grant and the numerous (some indignant!) comments on his take on the Fort Worth JASNA AGM. You should watch the video and then read the review and comment if you can…!

 The Circulating Library

 * If you have enjoyed the Bitch in a Bonnet blog, you will be interested to know that Rodi’s writings on the first three Austen novels are available for your ereader! –  all for 99c… read about it here:  

http://bitchinabonnet.blogspot.com/2011/12/home-news.html

* Sense and Sensibility: The Bath/ Palazzo Bicentenary Edition Palazzo, illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat

Read more here: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-Sense-and-Sensibility-The-Bath-2413443.php#ixzz1h55k3iJ3

http://marvel.com/comic_books/issue/41722/northanger_abbey_2011_2

* Dr. Maureen Mulvihill spoke at the Florida Bibliophile Society on “The Evolution and Education of a Collector (1980s-): The Mulvihill Collection of Rare and Special Books and Images.”  http://www.floridabibliophilesociety.org/mulvihill.html

* If you have an interest in bygone etiquette books, Abebooks compiled a list several months ago – here are some items for sale by various booksellers:

The Lady's Guide to Perfect Gentility - Emily Thornwell, 1856

  http://www.abebooks.com/books/men-vs-women-etiquette-manners/womens-gentlemens-guides.shtml?cm_mmc=nl-_-nl-_-110328-m00-etiquettA-_-men

* Yale has issued several new updates of their Pevsner architectural books:

http://yalebooks.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/pevsner-update-news-about-new-and-forthcoming-architectural-guides-from-the-pevsner-editorial-team/

* New works from Pickering & Chatto:

1.  The Business of the Novel: Economics, Aesthetics and the Case of Middlemarch, by Simon R Frost

 http://www.pickeringchatto.com/monographs /business_of_the_novel_the

2.  Fashioning the Silver Fork Novel, by Cheryl Wilson

http://www.pickeringchatto.com/monographs/fashioning_the_silver_fork_novel

3.  and something new about Jane, coming in June 2012:

Jane Austen’s Civilized Women: Morality, Gender and the Civilizing Process, by Enit K. Steiner:

http://www.pickeringchatto.com/monographs/jane_austen_s_civilized_women

Jane Austen’s six complete novels and her juvenilia are examined in the context of civil society and gender. Steiner’s study uses a variety of contexts to appraise Austen’s work: Scottish Enlightenment theories of societal development, early-Romantic discourses on gender roles, modern sociological theories on the civilizing process and postmodern feminist positions on moral development and interpersonal relations.

Austen is presented as a writer who not only participated in late eighteenth-century debates, but who is able to address twenty-first-century concerns of a theoretical and practical nature.

 
* Gentleman’s Magazine exhibit at University of  Otago – not yet online:

Gentleman's Magazine - Monash University

Special Collections,University of Otago Library, is fortunate to have an entire run of the Gentleman’s Magazine from 1731 to 1866. Started by Edward Cavein January 1731, and printed form many years at St. John’s Gate in London, it was a ‘repository of all things worth mentioning’. It was the first ‘magazine’ in the modern sense. It was also the most important periodical in 18th century England, reflecting in its pages the diversity of Georgian life, politics and culture. It covered current affairs, political opinion, lead articles from other journals, miscellaneous information such as quack cures and social gossip, prices of stocks, science and technological discoveries, notices of births, deaths, and marriages, ecclesiastical preferments, travel, parliamentary debates, and poetry. Writers such as Dr Johnson, John Hawkesworth, Richard Savage, and Anna Seward were just a few of the thousands who contributed to it. At 6d per issue, it was an outstanding bargain. It remains an inexhaustible mine of information for scholars of eighteenth century life, and because of the wealth of genealogical information and records, it has become an important resource for family historians. 

Our exhibition ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine. The 18th century Answer to Google ‘ begins on 21 December 2011 and runs through to 16 March 2012, just in time for the new student intake. Eventually it will be online.

 But while we wait for that – you can visit their latest online exhibition “In Search of Scotland”

http://library.otago.ac.nz/exhibitions/insearchofscotland/index.html
 

• Charles Dickens:

As we will are celebrating Charles Dickens 200^th birthday throughout 2012, I will be posting a number of Dickens-related goings-on – I can only think that Austen would heartily approve of giving him his just due, and thus, he now has his own category in the PPWR: 

1. A bookseller’s list of some of his works that they have for sale [Tavistock Books]: 
 http://tinyurl.com/7c2t2y3

2. This one is very exciting as it combines my love of Dickens and my love of London and makes full use of my iphone capabilities: Dickens Dark London from The Museum of London:

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Resources/app/Dickens_webpage/index.html

3. The Free Library of Philadelphia’s Dickens exhibit:  http://libwww.freel library.org/dickens/

•  Books I am Looking Forward to:

* Thomas Jefferson’s Granddaughter in Queen Victoria’s England: The Travel Diary of Ellen Wayles Coolidge, 1838-1839. Edited by Ann Lucas Birle and Lisa A. Francavilla. Hardbound, 464 pages, 20 color and 10 black and white illustrations. Copublished by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  http://www.monticellocatalog.org/205632.html

 Ellen Wayles Coolidge arrived in London in June 1838 at the advent of QueenVictoria’s reign – the citizens were still celebrating the coronation. During her nine-month stay, Coolidge kept a diary that reveals the uncommon education of her youth, when she lived and studied at Monticello with her grandfather Thomas Jefferson. This volume brings the full text of her diary to publication for the first time, opening up her text for today’s reader with carefully researched annotations that provide the historical context.

London’s clocks, theaters, parks, public buildings, and museums all come under Coolidge’s astute gaze as she and her husband, Joseph Coolidge, Jr., travel the city and gradually gain entry into some of the most coveted drawing rooms of the time. Coolidge records the details of her conversations with writers such as Samuel Rogers, Thomas Carlyle, and Anna Jameson and activists including Charles Sumner and Harriet Martineau. She gives firsthand accounts of the fashioning of the young queen’s image by the artists Charles Robert Leslie and Sir Francis Chantrey and takes notes as she watches the queen open Parliament and battle the first scandal of her reign. Her love of painting reawakened, Coolidge chronicles her opportunities to view over four hundred works of art held in both public and private collections, acknowledging a new appreciation for the modern art of J. M. W. Turner and a fondness for the Dutch masters.

As rich as her experience in England proves to be, Coolidge often reflects on her family in Boston andVirginia and her youth at Monticello. As she encounters her mother’s schoolgirl friends and recalls the songs her grandfather sang while working in his study, Coolidge’s thoughts return to Monticello and the lessons she learned there. Across the spectrum of her observations, Coolidge’s diary is always strikingly vivid and insightful – and frequently quite funny.

* Cambridge University Press has just published Samuel Johnson in Context, a collection of 47 short essays about the great lexicographer and his world. The book, which is aimed at a college and general audience, is edited by DSNA member Jack Lynch (also author of The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of English from Shakespeare to South Park [2009]). Lynda Mugglestone contributes an article on “Dictionaries” and Lisa Berglund,  the introductory chapter on “Life.” Visit the Cambridge UP website for a complete Table of Contents: http://www.cambridge.org/gb/knowledge/isbn/item6476720/?site_locale=en_GB

Few authors benefit from being set in their contemporary context more than Samuel Johnson. Samuel Johnson in Context is a guide to his world, offering readers a comprehensive account of eighteenth-century life and culture as it relates to his work. Short, lively and eminently readable chapters illuminate not only Johnson’s own life, writings and career, but the literary, critical, journalistic, social, political, scientific, artistic, medical and financial contexts in which his works came into being. Written by leading experts in Johnson and in eighteenth-century studies, these chapters offer both depth and range of information and suggestions for further study and research. Richly illustrated, with a chronology of Johnson’s life and works and an extensive bibliography, this book is a major new work of reference on eighteenth-century culture and the age of Johnson. [from CUP site]

* John Sutherland,  Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives (Profile Books, 2011)

And a review by Jonathan Bate: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoirreviews/8899313/Lives-of-the-Novelists-by-John-Sutherland-review.html

• On my bedside table

* Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James.  Listen to this interview on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/08/143276773/in-pemberley-james-picks-up-where-austen-left-off

[ok. I have finished this – will post a short review and a compilation of other reviews – very mixed – but most Austen people seem to be universally disappointed … a shame really - it should have been better...]

• Articles of Interest

* Rudd, Amanda. “The Spaces Between: Creating A Space for Female Sexuality in Frances Burney’s Evelina, Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian, and Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.”   Plaza: Dialogues in Language and Literature 2.1 (2011): 82-91.  Full text here: http://journals.tdl.org/plaza/article/viewFile/5934/pdf_415

* This is a podcast on Jane Austen and the Body, with  Cheryl Kinney and Elisabeth Lenckos [and thanks to Diana B. for the link]: http://www.chicagohumanities.org/Genres/Literature/2010-Jane-Austen-and-the-Body.aspx
 

Websites and Blogs worth a look:

* From the Letter & Layout – the rest is cultural history blog: about the Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine, with some mention of Almacks:

http://abeautifulbook.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/in-praise-of-eccentricity/

* Austen characters resolutions at Austen Authors: I thought this was very good and a lot of fun – can you think of more?

http://austenauthors.net/jane-austens-characters-new-years-resolutions
 

Museum Musings – Exhibition Trekking

1.  National Portrait Gallery:

Queens in Waiting: Charlotte & Victoria [26 November 2011 - 9 September 2012]

Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold

[by William Thomas Fry, after George Dawe, 1817]

In the early nineteenth century two young women would occupy the position of ‘heir to the throne’ in quick succession. One died tragically early, while the other, born to replace her, went on to reign for over sixty years as Queen Victoria. Telling a tale of romance, sorrow and renewed hope, this display focuses on the fateful linkage in the history of Princess Charlotte of Wales and Princess Victoria of Kent, and how both their lives pivoted around Prince Leopold – beloved husband to one, and trusted uncle to the other.

Featuring a range of portraits in wax, watercolour, and print, as well as commemorative images, it includes an engraving of Princess Charlotte’s last portrait from life by Sir Thomas Lawrence, completed posthumously. By bringing together these images, the display traces the idealised nature of the imagery used to represent a young woman in direct line to the throne at a time when the nation tired of the debauched Prince Regent’s rule. [from the NPG website]

* Winterthur is offering a workshop: Furniture in the South: Makers & Consumers – March 1–2, 2012
http://www.winterthur.org/?p=946&src=eblast

[image: Easy chair made in Charleston, South Carolina, 1760-70]

* An exhibition of recent acquisitions at Monash University– a memoir of a London pickpocket [George Barrington]:

http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/recent-acquisitions6/virtual-exhibition/items/item29.html

* Exhibition at the Boston Public Library - Rare Books Exhibition Room, through March 30, 2012:

From Pen to Print: the Handwriting Behind the Book features handwritten letters, notes, postcards, and other manuscripts that reveal personal, private, and otherwise veiled aspects of the production of books. Putting authors’ manuscript materials on display alongside their print books, the exhibition reveals the passions, obsessions, lofty dreams, and gritty realizations triggered by the writing and publishing process. These materials capture the relationships between 19th- and 20th-century American authors, editors, and readers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Alice Cary, Walt Whitman, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Frost, and more. Open in the Rare Books Lobby at the Central Library in Copley Square through Friday, March 30, 2012, 617-536-5400. Special hours: M, T, W, F: 9am-5pm; Th: 11am-7pm

* American Christmas Cards 1900-1960: by Kenneth Ames:  the exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center is now over, but you can read about it here:

http://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/gallery-at-bgc/focus-gallery-1/christmas-cards.html

and more about the book here: http://yalepress.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/for-the-card-carrying-shopper-kenneth-ames-on-christmas-cards/
Regency Life

• History 

* History Today – articles on Georgian England [many are for subscribers only, but there are several available to all]:  http://www.historytoday.com/early-modern-16th-18thc/georgian

• Fashion

* The Charleston Museum– Fashion Plates: Illustrating History’s Latest Styles, 1760-1920s [November 19, 2011 - May 6, 2012] 

http://www.charlestonmuseum.org/exhibits-fashionplates

And you can follow the Museum’s Textile Tuesday, a weekly post of a piece from their extensive textile collection : http://charlestonmuseum.tumblr.com/

Shopping:  [I’m done with shopping…]

For Fun:

Visit the blog of the Jane Austen House Museum [now penned by Julie Wakefield of Austenonly!] for a post on board games for the holidays – “Snakes and Ladders the Jane Austen Way” …

http://janeaustenshousemuseumblog.com/2012/01/03/a-board-game-for-the-holidays-snakes-and-ladders-the-jane-austen-way/

Enjoy the browsing! – let me know if you find anything interesting to share…

Copyright @2012 Jane Austen in Vermont

[Image: Vintage Postcard]

**

I send you to last year’s post on Jane Austen’s Very Own Scrooge!

[Dinner at Randalls at Chrismologist.blogspot.com]

********************************

Wishing You All a Very Merry Christmas!!

With Love from Deb 
at Jane Austen in Vermont
*************

Copyright @2011, Jane Austen in Vermont

For those with a BBC iplayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018nwtk/The_Many_Lovers_of_Miss_Jane_Austen/

Copyright @2011 Jane Austen in Vermont

The random drawing for the 2012 Jane Austen Calendar from the JASNA-Wisconsin group has just been done! – Drum Roll Please…and the Winners are…

Felicia, who commented on December 16^th and wrote the following:

I would thank Miss Austen for bringing some wonderful people in my life. Because of her books I have met some great friends. 

Felicia

And 

Cara Dragnev, who commented on December 16^th as well:

Happy Birthday to Jane! And what a tribute to her to have this wonderful blog party! If I wrote Jane a letter, I would first of all THANK her. Thank her for all the joy she has brought to me and all who read her. I would love for her to see one of her books as a film and get a reaction. Can you imagine? Thank you for joining in this wonderful party! 

~Cara

*********************** 

Congratulations Felicia and Cara! I will email each of you privately, but if you see this, please send me your mailing address and contact information as soon as possible and I will get the calendar off to you right away.  If I don’t hear from you by December 27^th, I will draw another name. My email is jasnavermont [at] gmail [dot] com 

If you are not one of the lucky winners, and are in desperate need of a Jane Austen calendar [and you should be...], you can order your own copy and more for all your friends at the JASNA-Wisconsin website here.

Thank you all for participating! – I have not answered any of your comments due to the Holiday Season Craziness, but thank each and every one of you for your own delightful letters to Jane Austen and the various gifts you would give her if you could! I encourage everyone with a spare minute in their day [and when might that be one asks?] to read the many comments and see how Austen has touched so many lives across generations and geography… 

And a final thank you to JASNA-Vermont’s Michelle Singer for her lovely tribute letter to Jane that started all this !  

Wishing you all a Festive and Happy Holiday!

Danforth, Handcrafted Pewter, Middlebury Vermont

Deb, at Jane Austen in Vermont

Copyright @2011 Jane Austen in Vermont

For Your Enjoyment

A plug for the Jane Austen’s Regency World Magazine – if you don’t already subscribe, time to treat yourself by asking for it for Christmas; or a perfect gift for your best Jane Austen fan friend…

The next issue, Jan/Feb 2012, Issue 55 will be on sale January 1, 2012!

Contents:

• An interview with P. D. James [on the cover] ~ on her love of Austen and her new book Death Comes to Pemberley
• Regency Childbirth ~ Pregnancy horrors in Georgian times
• Let it Snow, Let it Snow ~ exploring the winter weather in Jane’s novels
• Letter to Cassandra ~ the joy of seeing Austen’s handwriting
• Austen’s Contemporaries ~ the ‘other’ Jane ~ Jane Porter, and her sister Anna Maria

And of course all the regular columns from JAS, JASNA, the topical news from contemporary papers, the quiz, and so much more – even the advertisements are interesting!

You can visit the magazine’s website here.

You can subscribe online here: 
http://www.janeaustenmagazine.co.uk/subscriptions.html

• from outside the UK: £29.70 plus £9.00 postage [@ $60.74 total]
• from inside the UK: £29.70 plus £3.30 postage

…and worth every penny!

Copyright @2011 Jane Austen in Vermont