Jane Austen
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Horace Walpole’s Legacy at Strawberry Hill nearby the Thames
At the time of Jane Austen’s birth on the sixteenth day of December 1775, Horace Walpole, 4th Earl Orford (1717- 1797) was using decorative ornament inspired by a literary and pictorial interest in Gothic architecture at Strawberry Hill, his villa nearby the Thames at Twickenham in the London borough of Richmond.
Taking Tea with Jane Austen a blend we would surely enjoy
Taking tea with Jane Austen is all about stylish good behaviour, propriety and pleasure all coming together in an ultimate blend we would surely all enjoy.
The City of Bath in the Age of Pleasure
It was not until the fifteenth century when King Henry V111 came to see Bath for himself that the therapeutic value of the waters became, once again, well known and people came to be cured. However it would only become a centre for fashionable people following the arrival of Richard ‘Beau’ Nash in 1702.
In Trust for a Nation – A Jane Austen Treasure, The Watsons
The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford has acquired at a Sotheby’s auction the last Jane Austen original manuscript, which has been in private hands
English Country Style – Understated Georgian Grace
After World War II English Interior Designer John Fowler extracted the very essence of elegance out of eighteenth century interior style, added nineteenth century concepts of comfort, convenience and associations with home, hearth and family, to create an all new ‘eclectic’ English Country Style. It found favour the world over because of its comfortable connotations and understated Georgian grace.
Elegance, a refinement of taste to cultivate polite society
An evening of traditional elegance, say at the White House or Government House Australia, still requires a perfection of planning and wise organisation so that it appears not to be contrived at all.
Love Jewellery – Regency to Revival
England’s Prince Regent George, Prince of Wales, later George IV (1762 – 1830) scandalized the nation with his reckless and lavish living habits. He gave an impressive love gift a diamond riviére (a necklace of precious stones, generally set in one strand) to his mistress Elizabeth, Lady Conyngham, who reputedly received gifts of jewels valued at the time in the region of 80,000 pounds.
Revolutionaries and Romantics, Byron the Rock Star Poet
For historians of art, design and style the Regency era in England is an age of extravagance and, of the arts and sciences. It is about romantics and revolutionaries, poets and princes, architects and artists. It is also a paradox – where extremes meet. Of all its many personalities one still stands out. George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron (1728-1844). With his aristocratic demeanour, personal charm and undeniable beauty, Byron was described in his own time as ‘a child of passion and the fool of fame’. But was he the very image of what a poet should be?
Revolutionaries and Romantics, The Regency
In 1770, a decade after George III of England came to the throne, a Bill went before the English Parliament for consideration. – It read ‘That all women of whatever rank, profession or degree, whether virgins, maids or widows, that shall from and after such Act, impose upon, seduce and betray into matrimony, any of his Majesty’s subjects by the scents, paints, cosmetic washes, artificial teeth, false hair, Spanish wool (a form of rouge pad), iron stays, hoops, high heeled shoes and bolstered hips, shall incur the penalty of the law now in force against witchcraft and like misdemeanours, and that the marriage, upon conviction, shall be null and void’. If ever men had an opportunity in history to change their lot, this was it, but they blew it. Beauty, and or money were, it seems, were the only things required of a woman in this age of romantics and revolutionaries. If she had the first, she usually managed to marry the second. If she had the second, she did not need the first. No matter how ill-favoured, there was a small chance of a rich woman ‘leading apes in hell’ a commonly thought superstition about the unenviable lot of spinsters in the after life. There was a story abroad that the practical Irish issued a list of English women of fashion from Duchesses down to untitled rich nobodies ‘for the benefit of Irish fortune hunters’, although it’s never been found in any archive.
What Is: Jane Austen, more than the cultivation of the mind?
While her only known image may seem to reveal otherwise, there was nothing really plain about Jane.
Her novels, which have become classics in their own right, allow us today to share the memory of the robust society in which she lived and its privileges of rank. It was a colourful, turbulent and seemingly romantic world in the process of rapid evolution and Jane liked writing about young women fighting the battles of the heart to win the prize of marriage upon the field of courtship. They belong as much to her times as do the list of battle honours won by those involved in the era’s significant war campaigns.
Carolyn’s Reading Choices for the Holidays 2010/2011
The act of reading has been for me, in my lifetime, both saviour and friend. I particularly love reading about people. So biographies are always near the top of my list. And, having worked in the creative industry for much of my life, poetry, classic novels, art, design and style books are next…but
First Impressions – Pride and Price – Jane Austen at Sotheby’s
‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?‘ said eighteenth century author Jane Austen in her most talked about novel “First Impressions” which was published as “Pride and Prejudice” in 1813. If she were alive today Jane would not be laughing at the amounts [...]
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