Linda Dennery and Meg Levin, our New York Region colleagues, have passed along the following end-of-year tidbits. Of particular interest is the letter from publisher John Murray to Cassandra Austen.
As the centenary of Pride and Prejudice celebration ends, we offers a few items to round out the year:
1. An 1831 letter (long thought lost) to Cassandra Austen from John Murray, Jane Austen’s last publisher, has been found:
Murray’s letter
2. You may have missed New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s piece linking Jane Austen’s novels and professional football (!)
Dowd column
3. The British Library has uploaded over one million illustrations from its collections to the photo site Flickr, free for anyone to copy and reuse without charge. They range from the 17th to the 19th century. Here for example is Mr Wrench, a character in the “burletta” Tom and Jerry, or Life in London performed in London from 1821 to 1823:
Mr. Wrench
Unfortunately the archive has been dumped onto Flickr with not much in the way of captions and no easy way to search the site. As one blogger at the website Londonist has noted, “the search box is about as easy to handle as a wasp-drawn chariot.” This particular writer has selected two books about London and has posted illustrations on his website:
The Londonist
If you find any particularly good Regency illustrations please let us know!
Happy New Year from
JASNA NY Metro