Web Round-up ~ All Things Austen [and then some…]

Updated! – I completely missed the following: The 2010 Jane Austen Tour at Feelin’ Feminine – the competition began July 19 and runs through August 3rd, so give your creative side full-throttle and see what you can come up with… click here for entry categories [fashion, crafts, visuals, character studies, etc…]

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I didn’t do a separate post on the latest issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World – another fully-packed , beautifully presented collection of articles – sometimes we think that everything worth reading / knowing about Jane Austen is on the Internet – and it is such a delight to get this journal every other month and just savor this hand-held treat, to be taken anywhere anytime without needing a “connection” to anything! – so in this issue:

• Maggie Lane article on grandparents in Austen
• the story of Queen Adelaide, wife to William IV [successor to George IV]
• the Austen family wills
• the business of smuggling
• Jane Austen on ebooks
• Henry Cope, the “Little Green Man or Bath Bugaboo”
• Mags of Austenblog on Austen vs. the Brontes [guess who wins!]
• letters, Society news, newspaper reprints from 1802, tidbits*

* this news item for instance:  the Austen statue in Lyme Regis  [where I genuflected and then burst into tears] has disappeared during renovation work and no one seems to know where it might be – so if any of you out there may have inadvertently taken off with it , you are to contact Maggie Lane at JARW [in confidence of course]  – and this article from March 2010, “Have you Seen Jane Austen’s Head?”  [unfortunately my picture of said head is on a slide]

[Image from JARW Magazine, No. 46, p.4]

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This year the 200th anniversary of Elizabeth Gaskell’s birth is being celebrated ~  here are a few links to follow the festivities – if you are in the Manchester area, there is a lot to choose from:

• Elizabeth Gaskell: A Connected Life – Exhibition at the John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester [July 15-November 28, 2010] – includes works and artifacts – nothing yet online
• The Elizabeth Gaskell Bi-Centenary events list at Cheshire Peaks District.com
• an article in the Guardian by Helen Carter
• JAIV post on Gaskell – works, bibliography, etc.

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Amanda Vickery, author of A Gentleman’s Daughter and Behind Closed Doors, can be heard at BBC4 [just seven days left!] on “Wicked Women” – Voices from the Old Bailey.  The upcoming radio piece on July 29 is on the voices of the children who founds themselves in court.  Click here for Ms. Vickery’s website to keep current on her speaking schedule.

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The Sotheby’s auction houses have been running amok with letters, cookery and decorative arts items selling like they were going two-for-one – here are just a few for browsing and drooling:

• Books for Cooks, Sotheby’s July 15, 2010 – 108 lots of early cookbooks – great fun to browse and zoom if you are into cookery books
• An Exceptional Eye: A Private British Collection, Sotheby’s July 14, 2010 – 126 lots of miniatures, paintings, and decorative arts [total sale 6,698,588 GBP]

Regency Gilt-Bronze Candlesticks – £2000

• English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations,  Sotheby’s July 15, 2010 –  179 lots – alas! no Austen but a number of the Romantic poets, letters of Queen Elizabeth I, and a Lord Nelson letter that sold for £6,875 [go to link to zoom in]

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And if you are really into your laundry and while scrubbing and folding and ironing you care to give a thought to how it used to be done, the fabulous website Old & Interesting has a new post on the History of Starching Fabric – now what would Henry Tilney have to say about starching muslin…?

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The Jane Austen Centre’s website is a treasure trove of all things Jane – their online Magazine includes constantly updated articles on fashion, recipes, history, book reviews [yours truly was just honored to be asked to publish my review of Jennifer Forest’s Jane Austen’s Sewing Box], biographies, craft projects and the best of all, from the pen of Mags of Austenblog,  There Must be Murder, a 12-part novella!

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There seems to be an iphone game of P&P and Zombies – but I cannot handle this at all – this is one application my iphone will have to live without – back to the basics for me, a la Austenprose’s efforts to save us all…

[Posted by Deb]