Follow Friday: Regency Servants

Regency Reader offers information about Household Staff. Click here to learn more about the hierarchy of Servant Staff in great households.

Follow Friday

The husband of a Jane Austen reader of my blog, Jane Austen's World, wrote to say that " She found it funny that another person had the same - if not better - idea for that banner, although mine is still a work in progress."

Jane Austen's World banner

I hurried over to his blog, Vague Rant, and found his re-interpretation of the misty scene to be ironic and original. I wrote back to say that Jane would have found this situation funny, which is why I am such a big fan of hers. He agreed. Both banners evoke what our blogs are about.

Vague Rant banner

Another blog had changed the same generic scene into a GIF image with branches swaying in the wind and leaves falling. I was unable to reproduce that image (or recall which blog had made the change.) Upon seeing it three years ago, I realized that I could alter the banner to suit the theme of my blog.

Generic blog banner

Have you noticed similar alterations? Inquiring minds want to know.

Tacky Royal Wedding Souvenirs

Ah, Wills and Kate are getting married. The tacky wedding souvenir trade is relishing the opportunity to go wild for the next year or so. Click on this Daily Mail article.

The ubiquitous china plates and cups

Gawker offers a funny look at the Royal Wedding Souvenir industry

Kate Middleton porcelain thimbles. Hah!

Wills and Kate: Here Comes the Kitsch

The Royal Wedding Souvenir trade has had a dubious tradition

Follow Friday: Regency Fashion Plates

A Thousand Pixels offers beautiful Regency fashion plates, some of which are quite rare. Click here to enter the blog. 

September 1812 Full Dress, Ladys Monthly Magazine. Image @A Thousand Pixels

Follow Friday: Debbie Thinks Deep

In Debbie Thinks Deep you will find images of a gorgeous scrapbook in homage to Debbie's visit to Jane Austen's house in Chawton. Having attempted only one scrapbook in my life, I know how much time and effort she put into this endeavor. Click on over and take a peek! Click here for more of her images. Cool.

Follow Friday: Dancing With Mr Darcy and the Jane Austen Festival in Bath

Dancing in the ballroom at Chawton House

Two recent events may spark your interest. One is "Dancing With Mr. Darcy" at Chawton House. Click here to see over 80 images of the event. 

Refreshments during the ball

The Jane Austen Festival in Bath is ongoing and fabulous, from Friday 17th to Saturday 25th September. Click on the Jane Austen Centre in Bath to see Owen Benson's Flickr photo stream. Click here for an online visit to the venues in Bath.

Jane Austen Festival, Bath

Follow Friday

Bath Crescent

My Bath obsession continues. Ever since Tony Grant returned from his trip, I have been longing to revisit that gracious city. This site is the next best thing. Welcome to the City of Bath, England offers 36 panospheric scenes, in which a camera rotates and reveals details of the scene as if you are standing in one spot and turning your head or pivoting on your heels. The image of the Royal Circus provides a particularly good experience as the camera slowly pans around.

Included are a map, as if you are going on a walking tour, and descriptions of the places you are seeing. Awesome. And enjoy!

Follow Friday

The website, English and French Antique Textiles, offers information on finding rare cloth and lace, or antique clothes, such as an 1815 christening gown (below). Find Spitalfields silk (above) , an 18th c. French quilt, hand embroidered dress silk, and a woven toile d'abbeville from the 17th century.

Follow: Friday Jane Austen and Her Regency World

Several months ago I set up a group on Facebook called Jane Austen and Her Regency World. I place items of interest about Jane Austen, many of them not featured here, on that page. For example, I linked to Jane Austen's Fight Club when it had only 600 visitors. For breaking news about Jane, join Jane Austen and Her Regency World, and find out everything you wanted to know about her but just don't have time to Google or Bing.

Follow Friday: Raise funds by clicking for Chawton House

Intrigued?

You can now raise funds when you search the web!
Use easysearch every time you search the Web and we'll give 50% of the fees paid by our advertising sponsors to Chawton House Library - less info...
Use easysearch instead of Google or any other search engine and you can make a real difference to Chawton House Library. By making just 10 searches a day with easysearch, you can raise around £20 a year.

As well as raising funds, easysearch also gives you the best search results available on Web. Today, the Internet is so big that different search engines will deliver different results for the same search. So, by combining the strengths of several search engines together - Yahoo!, Bing, Ask.com, MIVA, and many more - you get the very best results in terms of accuracy and relevance, which means you'll find what you're looking for quickly and easily every time - all in one 'easy' search! Click here to visit the site.

Thank you Christine Stewart for alerting me to this site: Embarking on a Course of Study

Follow Friday: Versailles and More

Catherine Delors, author of For the King and Mistress of the Revolution, maintains a lush and informative blog about the Georgian era in England and the Revolutionary era in France. Click on this link to visit Versailles and More and allow yourself to be informed and entertained in a most beautiful and sophisticated manner.

Follow Friday: J Bone

Does this illustration of Jane Austen look familiar? Well, it should. Artist J. Bone (as my friend Laurel Ann of Austenprose pointed out) created the image. I contacted the artist, who said that the illustration was originally published for a blog devoted to images of famous writers: Hey Oscar Wilde

I think Jane would have loved this rendition. If you will recall, the image was used for the poster for Pride and Sensibility several weeks back. (See below)



See more of J. Bone's work on this blog, Blah, Blah, Blog!

Follow Friday: Autumn Cottage Diarist

Roz Cawley's Autumn Cottage Diarist is like taking a step back in time towards a kindler, gentler England. The photographs are excellent. Her cottage life is like the embodiment of one of my dreams. When I visit this blog I am transported to another world: Lovely and most gracious - a trip to the time of Jane Austen with modern overtones. Enjoy your visit.

Friday Follow: Solitary Elegance

Solitary Elegance is a website that offers beautiful Regency inspired wallpaper, a Northanger Abbey Adaptations page designed for those who wish to study the novel in more depth, and C.E. Brock's illustrations of Jane Austen's novels. Heather only asks that you use the illustrations for non-commercial purposes and attribute their source. Enjoy your visit!

Image from Solitary Elegance, Northanger Abbey

Follow Friday: Jane Austen's Manuscripts Online

Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts are now available in a digitized version online. These facsimiles offer Jane Austen's novels in a virtual collection. Many of the Austen manuscripts are frail; open and sustained access has long been impossible for conservation and location reasons. The site's aims and objectives are to:

• To create a digital resource reuniting all the known holograph surviving manuscripts of Austen’s fiction in an unprecedented virtual collection.
• To provide for the first time full descriptions of, transcriptions of, analysis of, and commentary on the manuscripts in the archive, including details of erasures, handwriting, paper quality, watermarks, ink, binding structures, and any ancillary materials held with the holographs as aspects of their physical integrity or provenance.
• To develop complex interlinking of the virtual collection to allow systematic comparison of the manuscripts under a number of headings representing both their intellectual and physical states.

For the majority of us, this is as close to the original (delicate) manuscripts as we will ever get.

Image: watercolor of Elizabeth by Cassandra Austen

Follow Friday: Regency Redingote

Recently Katherine, the author of The Regency Redingote, had to move her blog over to Wordpress. I visit the site often to find information and historical snippets about the Regency that are both enjoyable and informative to read.

Take March 2010, for example. Katherine wrote about Velocipedes, the Regency variation of the bicycle, the English print room phenomenon, and the anticipated Regency bicentennial, which will begin next year. Another favorite post discusses Puzzle Jugs! When you hop on over to the Regency Redingote, you will see that bookmarking this site will be well worth your while!

Image at right: Puzzle jug, V&A museum

Follow Friday: Antique and Vintage Dress Gallery

Want to purchase a garment towards your very own Regency costume? Check out the Antique and Vintage Dress Gallery, 1750-1840's page!

This is a partial description of the listing of this Pelisse with Leg O'Mutton Sleeves, 1830:

Gorgeous burgundy wine silk color. Beautifully made, all hand stitched Original hooks/eyes at back. Excellent condition with only one 1" wear at the very bottom edge at back (see photo), and although it's all original, one back panel is ever so slightly darker than the other and with an extra horizontal seam (see photo - hardly worth a mention). Really this piece is in wonderful condition! Measures: 30" bust, 27" underbust (fits smaller than measures, and tiny shoulders). Really best for display, though strong enough to be worn!

Cost? $685. Click on the site to see more lovely offerings.

Follow Friday: Sue Wilkes

Sue Wilkes, author of Regency Chesire, offers soundbites from history in her blog, Sue Wilkes. She lives in England; thus visitors to her blog are treated to "inside" information about the Regency era. One of my favorite recent posts is entitled, Real Life in Regency England, which discusses the great contrasts in lifestyle between the rich and working classes.

Read my review of her novel in this link: Books to Keep You Company During the Holiday Season

Follow Friday: The Jane Austen Societies

The Jane Austen Society of North America cannot be overlooked in our Friday Follows. Featuring the incomparable publications of Persuasions Online, the electronic journal of JASNA. Regional JASNA Societies also boast their own websites -

• JASNA New York,
• JASNA Central New Jersey Chapter,
• JASNA Greater Louisville Region,
• JASNA Rochester,
• JASNA Syracuse, and
• Jane Austen in Vermont

are a few that quickly come to mind. (Forgive me if in my haste to create this post I did not include your society.) If you want to find a local JASNA chapter, click on these links, which feature 65 sister organizations:

• JASNA America
• JASNA Canada

Follow Friday: The Republic of Pemberley

Perhaps I am stating the obvious, but a Follow Friday without mentioning this juggernaut Jane Austen site would be foolish in the extreme. I am sure that every Janeite has stumbled across this immense website while cruising along the ether looking for Jane Austen tidbits. Look no more. Click here and prepare yourself for a prolonged visit.

My favorite feature? The Benevolent Society for the Preservation of the Good Name of Mr. Woodhouse aka The Woodhouse Defense League.