What better way to start the year that to focus on one of Jane Austen’s most beloved characters. Join Austen Variations as we spend January looking into the lovely Jane Bennet. “I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Jane — one does not often see anybody …
P&P: Behind the Scenes – Darcy and the Harlequin
While in London, Darcy attends a Christmastide pantomime with the Bingley sisters. Dec 30, 1811 Darcy laid his newspaper aside. Miss Bingley should not have worried, her little dinner party hardly garnered any notice at all. A few brief words of Sir Andrew’s and Lady Elizabeth’s attendance …
Welcoming in the New Year with Tea and Jane Austen by Mary Simonsen
Freeze warning looms for Phoenix, blizzard in NM sparks misery Source: MGM Online PHOENIX (KPHO/KTVK) – While Phoenix braces for a freeze warning Sunday night, travelers are finding blizzard conditions in New Mexico creating roadway misery. Eastbound Interstate 10 reopened shortly after 10 a.m. Sunday at US 191 after hazardous conditions forced its closure. These …
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Regency Theatre
The season in Regency England was not just balls and Almacks. The theatre in Regency times was an important place for those who spent the season in London, and those who ventured to the theatre did not attend to simply watch a play. They dressed to the nines and sat in long carriage lines to …
Pass the Water…Umm…okay, Pass the Wine?
Did you know that in as late as Victorian times water was considered dangerous? In fact, one of the main causes of death in children was tainted water. Adults avoided a similar fate by mixing wine with their water—nothing like a little alcohol to kill the germs! So, if you eliminate plain water, what was …
P&P: Behind the Scenes – Christmas Dinner at Longbourn
Christmas Dinner at Longbourn with the officers and the Gardiners proves interesting. December 25, 1811 Later that night, Elizabeth paced the very clean drawing room, waiting for their guests to arrive. Fresh evergreen and holly filled the room with the season’s fragrances, tied with cheery red bows. It should have been a very …
The 12 Days of a Jane Austen Christmas – The Christmas Wish
The parlour at Netherfield was bursting with cheer as my family enjoyed Jane and her Mr. Bingley’s first Christmas Eve celebration. The newly wed couple sat side-by-side on a sofa across from where I stood near the window and whispered to one another as they observed those around them. Jane’s countenance was blissful as was …
The 12 Days of a Jane Austen Christmas
On the eleventh day of Christmas, Jane Austen gave to me… an excerpt from A Jane Austen Christmas to whet your appetite. Each year, Regency era British theaters prepared Christmas pantomimes (pantos) that would begin on Boxing Day and run as long as the audiences demanded them. These were not silent productions, but …
The 12 Days of a Jane Austen Christmas – Day 9
A Christmas Vignette: Darcy and Elizabeth are traveling to Vienna for Christmas not long after their first anniversary, but things don’t go quite as expected… Elizabeth looked up from the pile of invitations stacked next to her plate and sighed quietly. After making a rambling wedding tour from the Côte d’Azur to Paris after their …
12 Days of a Jane Austen Christmas: Lady Catherine’s Christmas
It was Beatrice Nearey, an Edmontonian Janeite, who gave me an auspicious kick start as a Jane Austen Playwright. I had written Austenesque stories for years, but it never occurred to me to try my hand at plays, until Beatrice and her friend Dolores Kohler cleverly adapted a story of mine, “The Courtship of Mrs. …
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