Black velvet bonnet

From JA's letter to Cassandra Austen, Tuesday 18 December 1798 (Deirdre le Faye 1995 edition, p 25-26):

I took the liberty a few days ago of asking your Black velvet Bonnet to lend me its cawl, which it very readily did, & by whic I have been enabled to give a considerable improvement of dignity to my Cap, which was before too nidgetty to please me. - I shall wear it on Thursday, but I hope you will not be offended with me for following your advice as to its ornaments only in part - I still venture to retain the narrow silver round it, put twice round without any bow, & instead of the black military feather shall put in the Coquelicot one, as being smarter; - & besides Coquelicot is to be all the fashion this winter. - After the Ball, I shall probably make it entirely black.

The Divine Jane: Reflections on Austen from The Morgan Library & Museum on Vimeo.

Website Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts

Vanaf vandaag zijn de manuscripten van Jane Austen die bewaard zijn gebleven, allemaal online te bekijken via de website Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts. Het is voor het eerst dat deze manuscripten online bij elkaar zijn gebracht en voor iedereen te lezen zijn. De website is een project van onder andere Oxford University en Bodleian Library.

De manuscripten van Jane’s bekendste boeken – Sense and Sensibility en Pride and Prejudice – zijn verdwenen, maar veel van haar overige werk is nog in manuscriptvorm overgebleven. De manuscripten werden na Jane’s dood bewaard door haar zus Cassandra. Toen die overleed, werden ze verdeeld onder de leden van de Austen familie en later verkocht aan verzamelaars over de hele wereld.

Op de website zijn meer dan 1100 pagina’s te bekijken, in zeer hoge kwaliteit. Ook zijn er verschillende versies van manuscripten naast elkaar gezet, zodat te zien is welke aanpassingen Jane Austen tijdens het schrijfproces maakte.

manuscripten van Jane Austen

Do not be in a hurry. The right man will come at last.”

“To you I shall say, as I have often said before: Do not be in a hurry. The right man will come at last.”

That’s what Jane Austen told her niece Fanny Knight in a letter.
Well said, Jane!
Waiting for the right man is the theme of all of her novels. She has provided us with great examples of true heroines: women who wait for true love — and work on becoming better women while they wait for Mr. Right.

Through her witty plotlines, Jane Austen gives us deep insights on courtship and marriage. She champions marriages that foster the development of love, such as those of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy and Jane and Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice.

That’s not to say there’s no courtship strife. Romantic comedy, Jane Austen style is the best. But the drama gives way to love — and self-improvement.

No More Pride and Prejudice

For example, Lizzy and Darcy, as their opinions of each other change, try to better themselves for the other. After Lizzy’s rejection of him, Darcy is compelled to explain his motives for dissuading Bingley’s attachment to Jane and his behavior toward Wickham. His search for Lydia and Wickham proves beyond a doubt his love for Elizabeth. The utter contempt he feels for Wickham (rightly so, given the scoundrel’s attempt to seduce his sister) would have ordinarily kept him in a silent, unresponsive stupor. But his love and esteem for Lizzy lead him to take action. As he tells her, “That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. … I thought only of you.”

When Lizzy accepts his second proposal (which is much more romantic; thanks Jane!), Darcy pours out his heart, rejoicing in her love for him. For Darcy, love helps him become a better person, more attuned to his own feelings and those around him.

She softens his pride, as his actions help her overcome her inclination to prejudice. Elizabeth comes to see those around her in a new light, particularly Darcy. Her love for him deepens when she reads his letter, visits Pemberly, and learns from her aunt the complete account of his role in Lydia’s marriage to Wickham. She is overwhelmed when she realizes she had grossly misjudged Darcy and Wickham. This revelation prompts her self-discovery: “Till this moment I never knew myself.”

Lees verder:   jane austen

Mansfield Park

Patricia Rozema is the award-winning Toronto director and adapter/screenwriter of the 1999 film Mansfield Park. She also wrote the HBO version of Grey Gardens (I loved that! Didn't you?). I was completely captivated by Patricia's Mansfield Park when I watched it this month as part of my immersion in all things Jane. The protagonist in this story is Fanny Price, a highly moral and intellectually gifted girl who is sent from her poor family to live with her rich relations at Mansfield Park. She is treated as less-than-equal by everyone in the family, save for her cousin Edmund, a kindred spirit who shares her interest in literature. The CBC Book Club tracked Patricia down to ask her several questions about her film, Fanny Price and what she's working on now.

Q.: A decade ago, your adaptation of Mansfield Park was a part of the explosion of Hollywood interest in Jane Austen. You wrote and directed Mansfield Park. What drew you so strongly to this book?

A: First and most importantly, the plight of the main character -- her status as an outsider moved me. Then, I was interested in how different this novel was from the others. What was going through Austen's mind when she wrote it? It's so much more grave and engaged with issues of morality than the previous ones to that point. Then I read a couple of academic essays which suggested that this book was something of a meditation on the ideas of captivity and is born from a position of anger about the treatment of people as property. Then I read about the fact that the slavery issue was HUGE at the time of writing, raging in every wealthy home, and there was a court battle that resulted in something called the Mansfield Judgment -- the first case that restricted slavery in England. It was part of the public discourse of the time. And there were a few mentions of Austen loving a favourite abolitionist writer of the time. All these things together made me think I could engage with one of the greatest writers in English on one of her most unusual novels about something deeply important. I felt like I could make something new and add to our perception of Austen in an authentic way.

Q: In your film adaptation of Mansfield Park, you have Fanny Price speak to the camera, directly to the audience. Why did you do this?
A: I've always been interested in direct-to-camera address -- I love the intimacy of it. I think it replicates, to some extent, the intimacy of a writer and a reader. Film is about intimacy.

iage is indeed a maneuvering business," Fanny says in one of her letters to her sister. Is that still true for women today?

A: I think marriage was especially complicated in Austen's day because women really had no power. So all their freedom in the world was dependent on their husband's wealth and goodwill. Having your financial and social status depend on the mercurial nature of love required extraordinary...maneuvering. I included that quote because Jane Austen never married and was entirely dependent on the goodwill and charity of her brother. She was terrified of poverty and clearly had a taste for the finer things. I found it all rich and complicated territory.

Q: What do you think about YouTube and the fact that Mansfield Park is viewable online?
A: Hmmm, I struggle with it. I want people to see my work but also wouldn't mind being able to send my kids to whatever school is best for them. Difficult.

The History of England

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/austen/accessible/introduction.html

The History of England is an early work of Jane Austen. She completed the composition in November 1791 when she was just 15 years old.

Jane Austen's History is a lively parody which makes fun of the standard schoolroom books of the time, in particular Oliver Goldsmith's popular four-volume History of England from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II (1771). Declaring herself to be a 'partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian' she cites works of fiction, such as Shakespeare's plays, as historial authority and includes references to her own family and friends. Jane's older sister Cassandra illustrated the text with imaginative portraits of the English monarchs.

Maria Edgeworth (January 1, 1767-May 22, 1849)

It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.

Northanger Abbey
Maria Edgeworth (January 1, 1767-May 22, 1849) was an Irish novelist who's early "Gothic" works had untold influence on Jane Austen's life and writing. Austen admired her so much, that she sent her a complimentary copy of Emma when it was published in 1815. Edgeworth, the author of Belinda, and Castle Rackrent was known for the moral theme in her stories and was apparently not impressed with the novel. She never acknowledged Jane's gift, and later wrote, "There is no story in it, except that Miss Emma found that the man whom she designed for Harriet's lover was an admirer of her own--& he was affronted at being refused by Emma & Harriet wore the willow*--and smooth, thin water-gruel is according to Emma's father's opinion a very good thing & it is very difficult to make a cook understand what you mean by smooth, thin water-gruel."

Maria Edgeworth was born in Oxfordshire, at the home of her grandparents, but spent most of her life in Ireland, on her father's estate. She grew up in the landed gentry of Ireland, with the families of Kitty Pakenham (later the wife of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington), Lady Moira, and her aunt Margaret Ruston at Black Castle for company. She acted as manager of her father's estate, later drawing on this experience for her novels about the Irish. However, her early efforts at fiction were melodramatic rather than realistic. One of her schoolgirl novels features a villain who wore a mask made from the skin of a dead man's face.

In 1802 the Edgeworth family went abroad, first to Brussels and then to France (during the Peace of Amiens, that brief lull in the Napoleonic Wars). They met all the notables, and Maria received a marriage proposal from a Swedish count. They returned to Ireland and Maria returned to writing.

Mr. Edgeworth, a well-known author and inventor, encouraged his daughter's career, and has been criticized for his insistence on approving and editing her work. The tales in The Parent's Assistant were approved by her father before he would allow them to be read to her younger siblings (he had four wives and 22 children). Castle Rackrent was written and submitted for anonymous publication without his knowledge.

After her father's death in 1817 she edited his memoirs, and extended them with her biographical comments. Maria was also a close friend of Sir Walter Scott who visited her in Edgeworthstown and toured the countryside with her. Maria returned Scott's visit in 1823 and stayed at his home, Abbotsford, in Scotland. There is a stone at Tyhmer's Waterfall inscribed Edgeworth Stone in honour of Maria who is said to have rested there. Scott's move from poetry to novels was in part influenced by Edgeworth's work. In the preface to Waverley, he wrote: the extended and well-merited fame of Miss Edgeworth, whose Irish characters have gone so far to make the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may be truly said to have done more toward completing the Union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up, and felt he could do for Scotland what Edgeworth had done for Ireland.

Maria Edgeworth was explicit about the fact that all her stories had a moral purpose behind them, usually pointing out the duty of members of the upper class toward their tenants. However, her style did not pass muster with one of the religious leaders of the day: the preacher Robert Hall said, "I should class her books as among the most irreligious I have ever read ... she does not attack religion, nor inveigh against it, but makes it appear unnecessary by exhibiting perfect virtue without it ... No works ever produced so bad an effect on my mind as hers." Other eriod authors continuedte criticism. After meeting the Edgeworths, Lord Byron commented, "One would never have guessed she could write her name; whereas her father talked, not as if he could write nothing else, but as if nothing else was worth writing."

Maria was an active writer to the last, and worked strenuously for the relief of the famine-stricken Irish peasants during 1845. She died in 1849. Her broad education, the extent of her social contacts and knowledge of English and Irish society gave her writings a depth of understanding of manners, class, gender and race.

Biographical information provided by Wikipedia and other sources. To read Emily Lawless' 1905 biography, visit The Digital Library. Edgeworth's Collected works can be found at Project Gutenburg while much more information about the entire Edgeworth family can be found at The Edgeworth Website.

http://www.janeausten.co.uk/magazine/page.ihtml?pid=394&step=4

Who is Jane Austen?

For most people, Jane Austen is an obscure name they've heard somewhere but can't quite place. At best, she is responsible for those frilly, ribbons-and-lace period movies that make women curl up with a box of kleenex and make men head outside to mow the lawn. But at her essence, Jane Austen, a woman who herself never married, had more to say in her short life about the truth of marriage than any writer of fiction - or non-fiction - has since.
She is best known for her favourite book, Pride and Prejudice, written in the early eighteen hundreds and recently made into a lavish mini-series by A&E. Her other works, such as Sense and Sensibility and Emma, have also been made into feature films starring Emma Thompson and Gwynneth Paltrow, respectively. Few people are aware that the Alicia Silverstone movie Clueless is actually Emma in disguise, proving how timeless Austen's writing really is.
Without giving away too much for those who haven't introduced themselves to her yet, Jane Austen had a genteel yet rapier wit, and applied it to stories primarily involving middle class English country society. In each story, young women of often limited financial means face what was somewhat inevitable for all women in those days - a lucrative marriage - with wit, charm, grace, and incredible dignity. It would have been easy for Austen to create mercenary characters of low morality who connive to marry the richest man they can - Thackeray did it quite well in his book Vanity Fair - yet she chose instead to imbue her girls with intelligence and self-sufficiency and an implacable sense of their own worth.
Her books explored the dilemnas often facing women of the Regency period, the years between 1800 and 1820, who were not able to legally work and were prevented by law from inheriting property. She makes each character unique yet believable, gives each one the moral fortitude to turn down wealthy or presitigous suitors when there is no love between them, and brilliantly but gently shows us the consequences of marrying someone you don't love for the sake of the money or the position in society they might afford. She writes about many different kinds of couples, and isn't above showing us the initial flaws or misjudgements of her heroines, all for the sake of revealing basic truths about marriage.
In an age when marriage was a career for women, and when women of low income, no matter how beautiful or intelligent or accomplished, had little hope of ever marrying, Jane Austen was still able to see through the "business" of marriage and concentrate on the fundamental principles of it. Love, respect, and admiration for each other's character figure prominently in these books, as does independence and strong-mindedness. Her main heroines - the lovely, mischeivous and thoughtful Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, for example, are wise and mature beyond their years and don't flutter and blush at the initial attentions of suitable bachelors. The antagonists in these books, the characters we grow to disrespect or dislike, are the ones who are flighty and greedy, who manipulate men and who nag their husbands to death with their pettiness and spite. The line between the two character types is always clear, always shows us which is the proper moral road to take and which will ultimately lead to happiness in marriage.
Austen was centuries ahead of her time in depicting equal relationships between the couples in each book; the reader is left with the impression that no matter what the rest of England may have been like at the time, the married women in these books were loved and respected by their husbands and valued for their minds as well as their beauty or maternal characteristics. In fact, the husbands, like the once proud and arrogant Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, are often completely smitten by these women, unabashed fans of their wives' independence and intelligence, and are far better men than most male characters in liAnd no matter what hardships or tragedies befall the people in these books, the endings are always happy ones. The women always find loving husbands and are themselves made blissfully happy by love. This kind of pro-value, ultra-positive optimism is sadly lacking in most of our modern literature and movies; it is so refreshing to read a book that does not apologize for ending happily, even if we have to go back two hundred years to find it.
As a writer, I would never usually advise anyone to see the movie version of a novel before reading the book, but in the case of Austen, the somewhat thick style of Regency England can be hard to read through with no reference points. The movie productions are incredibly faithful to the books - verbatim dialogue, exact reproduction of every plot point, etc. - so the viewer doesn't miss much by watching the movie first. Most people who see Austen's movies choose to go back and read the books anyway, just for the subtle nuances and casual wit that sets her apart as a truly great novelist. Either way, Austen is a reward for those who believe in marriage, a welcome respite from a world that is cynical and jaded about the institution. Someone once described her books as a "long, luxurious bath on a Sunday afternoon" - hopeful romantics out there, lose yourself in one her stories and find out why.
Leanne Bell lives in Canada with her husband, who, along with the works of Jane Austen, was her main inspiration in writing about how to make a fairy tale marriage come true. You can learn more about her work on her site, www.andtheylivedhappilyeverafter.com.

Getting Dressed in 1805

number 13, Queen's Square

Jane Austen wrote the following extracts to her sister from number 13, Queen's Square, on Friday May 17, 1799. She was 23 years of age and had come to Bath with her mother and her brother Edward and his wife. It is a moment's walk from the shops in Milsom Street and very handy for the Pump Rooms and Baths. Edward was there to try the waters for his health. This is what Jane had to say about their lodgings.

We are exceedingly pleased with the house; the rooms are quite as large as we expected. Mrs. Bromley is a fat woman in mourning, and a little black kitten runs about the staircase. Elizabeth has the apartment within the drawing-room; she wanted my mother to have it, but as there was no bed in the inner one, and the stairs are so much easier of ascent, or my mother so much stronger than in Paragon as not to regard the double flight, it is settled for us to be above, where we have two very nice-sized rooms, with dirty quilts and everything comfortable. I have the outward and larger apartment, as I ought to have; which is quite as large as our bedroom at home, and my mother's is not materially less. The beds are both as large as any at Steventon, and I have a very nice chest of drawers and a closet full of shelves -- so full indeed that there is nothing else in it, and it should therefore be called a cupboard rather than a closet, I suppose.

I like our situation very much; it is far more cheerful than Paragon, and the prospect from the drawing-room window, at which I now write, is rather picturesque, as it commands a perspective view of the left side of Brock Street, broken by three Lombardy poplars in the garden of the last house in Queen's Parade.

Jane Austen’s Volume the First

This manuscript takes its name from the inscription on its upper cover. It contains a compilation of Jane Austen’s early short works, written in Austen’s hand as a fair copy, and includes Henry & Eliza, The Adventures of Mr Harley, and The beautifull Cassandra. Austen wrote in a ready-made bound blank-book and completed the transcript when she was seventeen. The manuscript was bought for the Bodleian Library through the Friends of the Bodleian in 1933 and was first published in an edition by R. W. Chapman (Oxford, 1933).

The conservation of the manuscript was made possible by a grant from the National Manuscript Conservation Trust and was carried out in parallel with an Arts and Humanities Research Council award to digitize the manuscript. The original, though damaged condition of this major literary manuscript required sensitive conservation treatment; a stationer’s binding was not intended to last indefinitely and subsequent use has led to its breakdown. Unfortunately, the damage was at a stage where it threatened safe handling of the volume, and a complete breakdown of the manuscript’s structure was threatened.

The conservation treatment was focussed on the repair of the damaged and broken spine folds of the manuscript as well as the breaking sewing and collapsed spine without dis-binding the manuscript. All repairs were carried out in-situ and the original structure was disturbed as little as possible during treatment. The conservation work was carried out by Andrew Honey of the Bodleian Library’s Conservation & Collection Care department.

Temporary repairs were carried out so that the manuscript could be fully digitized before conservation. The general condition of individual leaves was very good but many of their spine-folds were breaking down and several leaves were completely detached. The original sewing had broken down in places and the text-block was loose although sewing supports were sound and were still attached to the boards. The covering leather had broken down and the boards were not protecting the text-block.

To repair the leaves, Japanese paper patches were fed around the backs of sections, around the remains of the sewing thread, and pasted in place. The manuscript’s loose structure was repaired by re-sewing the text-block through a stiffened spine wrapper made from a laminate of linen and Japanese paper. This spine wrapper was then used to reposition the boards and formed the base for the new spine. The new spine was covered with layers of toned Japanese paper with a surface finish. Finally the repaired manuscript is housed in a new cloth box.

– From Andrew Honey

               http://theconveyor.wordpress.com/

Virginia Woolf on Jane Austen

It is probable that if Miss Cassandra Austen had had her way we should have had nothing of Jane Austen’s except her novels. To her elder sister alone did she write freely; to her alone she confided her hopes and, if rumour is true, the one great disappointment of her life; but when Miss Cassandra Austen grew old, and the growth of her sister’s fame made her suspect that a time might come when strangers would pry and scholars speculate, she burnt, at great cost to herself, every letter that could gratify their curiosity, and spared only what she judged too trivial to be of interest.

             http://www.jane-austen.it/detto/said.html

Lyme

Jane Austen stayed in Lyme with her family in the summer of 1804 and used her impressions of the beautiful little seaside town as background for her novel Persuasion. 'a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see the charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.' Built as a coaching inn in 1601, the Lion as it was known in Jane Austen's time, stood in a yard behind the houses that front Broad Street today. In the middle of the nineteenth century the inn was extended forward by incorporating Broad Street houses into the whole. As the family of a retired country Parson, the Austens were more likely to have chosen to stay here at the slightly less fashionable and less expensive of the two available inns. With regard to the room with the bay window where the Musgroves watched Mr Elliot's curricle leaving Lyme, there are two possibilities. Either the inn was already leasing additional adjacent accommodation to meet the burgeoning demand following the trend for sea bathing, or Jane simply used artistic license to extend her mind's eye view. The Royal Lion enjoys a further literary connection with John Fowles's novel 'The French Lieutenant's Woman'. The inn and the surrounding area were used as the setting in the book which was filmed on location starring Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep. To the left of the entrance in this friendly, family run hotel, there is a cosy beamed lounge bar. And upstairs, just across the landing from the spacious and comfortable dining room is the small Edward VII lounge with its bay window and famous view of 'the principal street almost hurrying to the water.'

Becoming Jane

Vanmiddag heb ik naar de DVD "Becoming Jane" gekeken.

Ik moet erg wennen aan Anne Hathaway als Jane Austen. Ook Tom Lefroy stelde ik me anders voor.
Dat vind ik het grootste bezwaar tegen films die gemaakt worden over boeken of zoals in dit geval een schrijfster, waar ik me, door te lezen, een voorstelling van maak. Wanneer dit niet klopt kan ik me daar maar met moeite over heen zetten.

Het script voor de film werd geschreven door Kevin Hood en Sarah Williams, en de financiering werd gedaan door BBC-Films en Irish Films met als eindverantwoordelijke Miramax Films. De film ging op 9 maart 2007 in Groot-Brittannië in première en in Nederland op 16 augustus 2007.

Hoewel de film uitgaat van een niet bewezen verhouding tussen Austen en Lefroy is de film verder gebaseerd op feitelijke gebeurtenissen. Als bron werd het boek Becoming Jane Austen van John Spence gebruikt, deze schrijver was tevens de historisch adviseur voor de film.

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Reviewed by Joseph Wiesenfarth.

Jon Spence’s Becoming Jane Austen is one of the best half-dozen books published on Austen in the last quarter century, at least. It is a remarkably learned book written in a remarkably lucid style and a joy to read. The research is so substantial, wide-ranging, and detailed that any conjecture Spence builds on it has the feel of bedrock itself. His interpretation of Jane Austen’s character and personality as well as of her fiction impresses the reader with his long and intimate acquaintance with the writer and her works.

Spence focuses on the way that Austen’s novels evolved from her immediate situation as well as from her imaginative appropriation of the people and events that constitute the history of her family. Two primary players in the drama of her life were Eliza de Feuillide and Tom Lefroy. Eliza entered into the Austen circle at Steventon with the same shock that Lady Susan invaded Longford and the De Courcy family. She captivated Henry Austen as quickly as Lady Susan did Reginald De Courcy. Keen-eyed girl that she was, Jane Austen immediately commemorated the event in “Henry & Eliza,” her send-up of the exploits of her flirtatious cousin.

Tom Lefroy appears in a series of novels as the attractive young man who disappoints the woman he loves because money and position, in the end, are more important to him than love itself. But Eliza and Tom are only two instances of the way that Spence integrates life into fiction. Members of the Austen and Leigh clans with their numerous and far-flung relations and acquaintances—from the tide of Humber to the Indian Ganges’ side—have their decades-old stories which Austen transforms in the alembic of her imagination. Spence never leaves us guessing about the process as he demonstrates how life becomes art with the help of Jane Austen’s family itself: “From their conversation she learned logic, a keen sense of cause and effect, a firm grasp of probability, and a quick penetration into human motivation.”

Indeed, this is a book full of wisdom about the author and her art. Just think of the critics who have twisted themselves into knots picking winners and losers in Mansfield Park; needlessly, as Spence deftly suggests: “We think we ought to like Fanny Price more than we do the fine, handsome Bertram girls and the warm, lively Mary Crawford. That it is difficult to do so, in our feelings if not in our reason, is precisely what Austen was determined to show. Our values tell us one thing, our hearts another. Mansfield Park is Austen’s most profound attempt to capture this inevitable confusion of feelings in human life—and her strategy was to make readers themselves confused in their own feelings about the characters in the novel.” I cannot recall a more sensible, incisive statement about this troubling novel. I feel the same when Spence writes about Persuasion: “The love of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth is tender rather than romantically intense, consoling rather than fulfilling. What Anne feels more intensely than thwarted love is loneliness and alienation. She sometimes seems a hapless victim of her own virtues, virtues deriving as much from self-denying passivity as from genuine goodness.”

Becoming Jane Austen is beautifully written. The passages already quoted testify to this. But note the modulation into perfection of this set of observations: “Not until Sanditon does the body take its own place as a theme in Austen’s work. Being energetic or fatigued, getting warm or cooling off, eating and drinking, complaining of maladies real or imagined, parading sex in words or actions: the characters in Sanditon bring us back inexorably to the body, its needs and desires. Where the theme might have led her remains unknown. She did not have the time or energy to complete the novel. In mid March 1817 she stopped writing, and her business became dying. The body had its way.” That last sentence has the very genius of Mrs. Bennet’s final immortal words on hearing of Lizzy’s engagement to Darcy: “I shall go distracted.” No possible choice of words could better serve Austen at that moment. “The body had its way”: No possible choice of words could better serve Spence at this moment.

What, then, have we in Becoming Jane Austen? We have research in dusty, neglected archives that leads to polished and penetrating readings of Austen’s novels along with an evocation of their author’s character that recalls Anthony Lane’s precise assessment of Jane Austen: “Her balance is beyond us; however good a person we may think she was, she was better.” Indeed, Jon Spence shows us the truth of this in showing us how like us she was as well as how unlike us she also was—rendering the stuff of life we know in six novels more brilliant than we can ever hope to know.

Joseph Wiesenfarth is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a Founding Patron of JASNA and has written extensively on Jane Austen since the publication of The Errand of Form in 1967.

De Stichting Jane Austen Society Nederland

De Stichting Jane Austen Society Nederland, die op 14 april werd opgericht, heeft haar eerste activiteiten aangekondigd. In aansluiting op het zeer succesvolle regency-ball, dat door de initiatiefneemster van de stichting was georganiseerd, gaat de society een ‘Jane Austen Living History Group’ opstarten.

JASNL is bezig om, in 1e instantie puur voor het plezier, een kostuumgroep op te starten met liefhebbers van Jane Austen om gezamenlijk terugkerende activiteiten te ondernemen. Denk aan picknicks op landgoederen, samenkomsten op mooie locaties, bals etc. Voorwaarde hierbij is dat je een kostuum hebt en in het geval van meedansen op bals ook de dansworkshops die JASNL organiseert hebt gevolgd.

Ook organiseert de Society een schrijfwedstrijd onder de titel ‘Schrijf jij als Jane Austen?’ Deelnemers kunnen een eigen geschreven verhaal insturen, dat geïnspireerd is door of op het werk en leven van Jane Austen.

Meer informatie over de Jane Austen Living History Group en de schrijfwedstrijd vind je op de Hyve van de Jane Austen Society Nederland.
http://janeaustensocietynl.hyves.nl/?&pageid=AKVBO0AD5M0OS8G00

Winchester Cathedral / black ledger stone

One would assume Jane’s body to lie beneath her black ledger stone, but that would be far too simple. You see, central heating was installed in the Cathedral in the 1930s, and the pipes would have run straight across Jane’s tomb. A volunteer guide indicated that her coffin had been moved one yard or two to the right of the ledger stone. So now where is she, really? I felt like whispering, “Jane, is that you?”

Poem

The manuscript of the poem she wrote on her 33rd birthday, which was also the fourth anniversary of the untimely death of her dearest Mrs. Lefroy:

The day returns again, my natal day;
What mix’d emotions in my mind arise!
Beloved Friend; four years have passed away
Since thou wert snatched for ever from our eyes.

The day commemorative of my birth,
Bestowing life, and light, and hope to me,
Brings back the hour which was thy last on earth.
O! bitter pang of torturing memory!

Fain would I feel an union with thy fate:
Fain would I seek to draw an omen fair
From this connection in our earthly date.
Indulge the harmless weakness. Reason, spare.

Jane Austen service held at Winchester Cathedral

A special service to mark the life of novelist Jane Austen has taken place at Winchester Cathedral where she is buried.
Austen lived in Steventon, near Basingstoke, in Southampton, and at Chawton, near Alton, before she died in Winchester in 1817 aged 41.
The service was attended by some of her descendants and a bible that belonged to her father was used.
A Jane Austen exhibition has also been opened at the cathedral.
The exhibits chart her lifelong connections with Hampshire.
Rebecca Smith, a descendant of the Austen family who attended the service, said she was very pleased with the exhibition.

"I know that people come to the cathedral for very many reasons, but one part of their pilgrimage will probably be to see where Jane is buried.

The service was attended by some of her descendants

"To have something more than just the gravestone, lovely as it is, and the brass plaque, I think is wonderful."

The house at Chawton is where Austen spent the last eight years of her life, and where she wrote most of her famous works about pre-industrial English society.

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Afgelopen weekend is in de kathedraal van Winchester een speciale kerkdienst gehouden ter herinnering aan het leven van Jane Austen. De kathedraal, waar Jane is begraven en waar onlangs een permanente tentoonstelling is ingericht over haar leven, kon op een aantal bijzondere kerkgangers rekenen. Er waren namelijk ook nazaten van de grote Austen-familie aanwezig. Een van hen, Rebecca Smith, liet aan BBC News weten zeer verheugd te zijn met de tentoonstelling. “Ik weet dat mensen om verschillende redenen naar de kathedraal komen, maar een deel van hun pelgrimage zal er waarschijnlijk uit bestaan om het graf van Jane te bezoeken. Het is fantastisch om nu meer te kunnen zien dan alleen de grafsteen, hoe mooi die ook is.”

Ander kerknieuws met een vleugje Jane Austen: Het BBC programma Songs of Praise is aanstaande zondag te vinden in Bath. Het programma bezoekt de dienst in St. Swithin’s Church, waar de ouders van Jane Austen getrouwd zijn. Songs of Praise begint om 17.30 uur en wordt uitgezonden op BBC1.