Lord Cobham was burnt alive, but I forget what for
February 25, 2014 10:17 AM   Subscribe

 
Hark! A Novelist.
Found a (printed/typeset) version of this in my local library a while back, but this has more Austen.
posted by aesop at 10:25 AM on February 25, 2014


"It was in this reign that Joan of Arc lived & made such a row among the English. They should not have burnt her – but they did."
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 10:42 AM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Laugh out loud funny, like a lot of her mature work.

I've never understood Mark Twain's dislike -- if it wasn't itself tongue in cheek --of Austen. Their senses of humor were comparable.
posted by bearwife at 10:49 AM on February 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Austen's Love And Freindship (original misspelling by Austen), which she wrote when she was 14, might be my favorite thing she ever wrote. It's such an awesome, biting satire of the epistolatory novel and romantic literary conventions of the time.

Austen would have fit right in within fanfic circles. It's pretty amazing.

Now pardon me as I faint about a jillion times. On every couch. Everywhere.
posted by tittergrrl at 11:07 AM on February 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


"In 1791, Cassandra [Austen] produced a series of circular illustrations of British monarchs for Jane's manuscript The History of England, which are noted to have resembled members of the Austen family more than royalty."

I wouldn't mind a key.
posted by Iridic at 11:18 AM on February 25, 2014


The film version of Mansfield Park, uses the juvenalia extensively as the basis for what Fanny Price writes. Fanny in the book is an unforgivable prig, but the movie really makes her interesting.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 11:21 AM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Jane Austen would have loved Tumblr.
posted by maryr at 11:29 AM on February 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I've never understood Mark Twain's dislike -- if it wasn't itself tongue in cheek --of Austen. Their senses of humor were comparable.

Maybe he saw too much of himself in her.
posted by wabbittwax at 11:33 AM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


JaneAwesome has started following fuckyeahhshapelymalecalves
posted by The Whelk at 11:33 AM on February 25, 2014 [10 favorites]


TonyTheTrollope likes this
posted by wabbittwax at 11:34 AM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


My wife is kind of a huge Jane Austen fan. Thank you for this link.... with luck she'll thank ME in more inappropriate ways.
posted by DigDoug at 12:24 PM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


the movie really makes her interesting

I've never understood the impulse to make a movie of a book that you think ought to have been written in a completely different way. This problem is particularly acute in Austen adaptations. The writers are forever saying "well, this book is great, but obviously we need to make the heroine much more overtly kick-ass and spunky." Which, you know, great--if you want to tell stories about overtly kick-ass, spunky gals, go for it. But then why are you adapting Jane Austen? Because all of her plots are deeply predicated on a social reality in which women's options and power and profoundly limited.

Fanny, in particular, is the product of an incredibly precarious social position. The Fanny of that adaptation simply makes no sense and the story in which she finds herself makes no sense. She is, essentially, a late C20th woman who has time traveled back into Austen's time and, what's more, knows that as soon as she's bored with the game she's playing she can hop back into the time machine and return to the present.

The tragic thing is, of course, that Austen's heroines are unbelievably witty, resourceful, resilient, intelligent women. Their stories are profoundly moving ones, often involving genuinely heroic struggles against truly crushing social constraints. But if you make a film where you just pretend those constraints aren't there because you think they're old and boring and shouldn't have existed in the first place you make the stories themselves completely meaningless.
posted by yoink at 12:26 PM on February 25, 2014 [14 favorites]


I wouldn't mind a key.

Jane Austen’s The History of England & Cassandra’s Portraits by Upfal and Alexander has an appendix that compares Cassandra's portraits with contemporary depictions of Austen family members and acquaintances.

Are We Ready for New Directions? Jane Austen’s The History of England & Cassandra’s Portraits, ANNETTE UPFAL and CHRISTINE ALEXANDER

Appendix G: ” The History of England” Portraits
They discovered that of the 13 portraits in “The History of England” at least 7 strongly resemble family members or friends of the Austens. Due to the obvious similarity in names, Upfal and Alexander argue that James I, Edward VI, and Henry V are likely representations of eldest Austen boys. Most notably, the nasty Queen Elizabeth is thought to be Mrs. Austen (Jane and Cassandra’s mother) and the benevolent Queen Mary is arguably Jane herself.
posted by zamboni at 12:34 PM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Austen's juvenilia is the greatest. One can only wonder what she would have written if she had lived longer-- would the biting, surreal, wild streak have re-emerged? Oh for a wormhole to an alternate universe where Austen's Late Novels exist!

THE ADVENTURES OF MR. HARLEY (with links to all the Juvenilia)
MR. HARLEY was one of many Children. Destined by his father for the Church & by his Mother for the Sea, desirous of pleasing both, he prevailed on Sir John to obtain for him a Chaplaincy on board a Man of War. He accordingly cut his Hair and sailed.

In half a year he returned & set-off in the Stage Coach for Hogsworth Green, the seat of Emma. His fellow travellers were, A man without a Hat, Another with two, An old maid, & a young Wife.

This last appeared about 17, with fine dark Eyes & an elegant Shape; in short, Mr. Harley soon found out that she was his Emma & recollected he had married her a few weeks before he left England.
posted by Erasmouse at 12:35 PM on February 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Includes the The Beautifull Cassandra (for your kick-ass, spunky gals..):
SHE then proceeded to a Pastry-cook's, where she devoured six ices, refused to pay for them, knocked down the Pastry Cook & walked away.
posted by Erasmouse at 12:38 PM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


The full list:
Austen herself, [Upfal] believes, served as model for Mary Queen of Scots, contradicting Fergus, who in her edition had suggested that Austen could be seen in Mary Tudor, “whose round face and red cheeks correspond to some traditional accounts of Austen’s looks” (History of England, ed. Fergus, p. iv). Other models proposed by Upfal are Austen’s brothers Henry, James, and Edward as Henry V, James I, and Edward VI; Mrs. Austen as Queen Elizabeth; Mary Lloyd as Mary Tudor; the Revd Edward Cooper as Edward IV; and Tom Fowle as Henry VI.
...
They have called on the services of Pamela Craig, “a forensic odontologist and so expert in facial structure” and Clifford Ogleby, an expert in “photogrammetry, the measurement of facial characteristics.” Craig and Ogleby endorse the edition’s claims in different ways. Ogleby, superimposing Cassandra’s famous sketch of her sister on the portrait of Mary Queen of Scots, finds a perfect fit, leading Upfal to suggest that the composite produces “a new, softer image of the mature Jane Austen at the period when her novels were being published.” Craig, comparing scanned images with Adobe Photoshop, likewise supports the identification of Austen as Mary Queen of Scots, but is more cautious about some of the other proposals.
posted by zamboni at 12:39 PM on February 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well, it's certainly more readable than Sense and Sensibility. Which says little...
posted by theweasel at 2:59 PM on February 25, 2014


Includes the The Beautifull Cassandra (for your kick-ass, spunky gals..)

Thank you for this. Now I'm just sad that it was never illustrated by Edward Gorey.
posted by moss at 3:31 PM on February 25, 2014


Austen's father had an unusually large library for a man of his station, and he gave her near free rein through the books. She quotes from and alludes to pretty scandalous plays and novels, and appears to have been a big fan of Henry Fielding, satire and sexy times included. She was widely and deeply read for a person of her time.
posted by viggorlijah at 5:42 PM on February 25, 2014


« Older Ageism in the tech industry?   |   Once, more, you mangle it more Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments