"These are the letters of our greatest novelist. They give glances and hints at her life from the age of 20 to her death at 41, the years in which she wrote her six imperishable books." -Claire Tomalin, Independent on SundayThe book's features include:
Deirdre Le Faye, now retired, worked for many years in the Department of Medieval & Later Antiquities at the British Museum. She started researching the life and times of Jane Austen and her family in the 1970s, and since then has written several books about them, the latest being A Chronology of Jane Austen and her Family 1600-2000, as well as numerous articles in literary journals.
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| Matthew MacFadyen as Mr. Darcy (r) at the breakfast table at Netherfield Park |
Alastair Dunning, programme manager at JISC, said: “Researchers in the humanities and social sciences are turning increasingly to geographical analysis as a way of bringing the facts and figures to life. What’s exciting about this resource is that the existing data you can explore today is just the start – the interface could be expanded to include new data sets and new maps, making it potentially useful to scholars in dozens of different disciplines. JISC’s commitment to funding open source projects means that other universities are already looking at how they might reuse the programmes that the Sheffield team has developed.”
Trial accounts from the Old Bailey, tax and population data, and even archaeological records can all be uploaded onto John Rocque’s famous 1746 map of London, now fully referenced to modern geographical coordinates by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).
Locating London’s Past is the result of a collaborative project between the University of Sheffield, the University of Hertfordshire, and the University of London. - JISC
Start the day with a new Jane Austen's quote.Have no fear if you missed this special offer. "Jane Austen – Fan Kit" App, which works on iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, has a regular price of $0.99.
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| Johdi May as Anne Taylor, Emma, 2009 |
Emma by Jane Austen Miss Taylor, governess for many years to the headstrong Miss Woodhouse, is contemplating her future as a paid companion when, well into her 30s, she gets a lucky break. An affluent local widower runs to fetch her an umbrella when he meets her in the rain, and soon she becomes Mrs Weston.
“The old Streets are unfit for the present frequency of Coaches.” He speculated that overpopulation and squalid conditions accounted for Londoners’ mediocre health and frequent bouts with plague, foreshadowing the work of early epidemiologists. “London, the Metropolis of England, is perhaps a Head too big for the Body, and possibly too strong,”
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| Chris contemplating the headdress with feathers |
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| Jene's brastrocity gown is made with bra cups |
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| 1794-5 Court gown with feathers |
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| 1796 court dress, Heideloff Gallery |
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| Jené's Bra Book asserts that the majority of women are wearing the wrong bra size. Food for thought. |
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| Amber crosses for Jane and Cassandra from Charles |
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| Jane Elizabeth, Countess of Oxford |
This year, British mystery lovers in particular have a glorious plum pudding of a whodunit awaiting them. P.D. James has taken up the challenge of feeding readers' holiday hunger for homicide. What's even more tantalizing is the fact that James' latest mystery is also a tribute, of sorts, to one of her most cherished authors, Jane Austen. James' new novel is called Death Comes to Pemberley: Think Pride and Prejudice meets "Clue."
It was generally agreed by the female residents of Meryton that Mr. and Mrs. Bennet of Longbourn had been fortunate in the disposal in marriage of four of their five daughters. Meryton, a small market town in Hertfordshire, is not on the route of any tours of pleasure, having neither beauty of setting nor a distinguished history, while its only great house, Netherfield Park, although impressive, is not mentioned in books about the county's notable architecture. The town has an assembly room where dances are regularly held but no theatre, and the chief entertainment takes place in private houses where the boredom of dinner parties and whist tables, always with the same company, is relieved by gossip.
A family of five unmarried daughters is sure of attracting the sympathetic concern of all their neighbours, particularly where other diversions are few, and the situation of the Bennets was especially unfortunate. In the absence of a male heir, Mr. Bennet's estate was entailed on his nephew, the Reverend William Collins, who, as Mrs. Bennet was fond of loudly lamenting, could turn her and her daughters out of the house before her husband was cold in his grave. Admittedly, Mr. Collins had attempted to make such redress as lay in his power. At some inconvenience to himself, but with the approval of his formidable patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh, he had left his parish at Hunsford in Kent to visit the Bennets with the charitable intention of selecting a bride from the five daughters. This intention was received by Mrs. Bennet with enthusiastic approval but she warned him that Miss Bennet, the eldest, was likely to be shortly engaged. His choice of Elizabeth, the second in seniority and beauty, had met with a resolute rejection and he had been obliged to seek a more sympathetic response to his pleading from Elizabeth's friend Miss Charlotte Lucas. Miss Lucas had accepted his proposal with gratifying alacrity and the future which Mrs. Bennet and her daughters could expect was settled, not altogether to the general regret of their neighbours. On Mr. Bennet's death, Mr. Collins would install them in one of the larger cottages on the estate where they would receive spiritual comfort from his administrations and bodily sustenance from the leftovers from Mrs. Collins's kitchen augmented by the occasional gift of game or a side of bacon.... Click here to continue
