Author: collinshemingway
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Unexpected Moments of Reaching Out
One scene has kept me coming back to George Eliot’s Middlemarch for fifty years. Dorothea, a young and engaging woman, has married an older man, clergyman Mr. Casaubon, out of an intellectual and religious ardor for his scholarship. After just eighteen months, she realizes that she is trapped in a loveless marriage with a third-rate…
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Rare Books, Rare Writing
Last time, I spoke of two books that give me joy in the New Year. Read about the first, Sarah Emsley’s The Austens, here. The second, by Rebecca Romney, is Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. Both works are part of the onslaught of at least twenty-five major Austen-related productions for the year 2025, the 250th anniversary of…
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Two Women, A World Apart
Two books give me joy in the New Year. The first, by Sarah Emsley, is The Austens, a novel about Jane Austen’s relationship with her sister-in-law, Fanny Palmer Austen. The second, by Rebecca Romney, is Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, nonfiction about women writers who shaped the English author. Both works are part of the onslaught of…
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Miss Austen—No Politician, She
On the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, she remains a touchstone for politics for many people. We find that white supremacists are co-opting the English author in support of a racial dictatorship, shocked opponents are claiming that true readers are “rational, compassionate, liberal-minded people,” and conservatives are chiding Janeites for assuming that great literature…
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Austen’s 250th Celebration Marked with Energy, Study
Baltimore’s recent annual general meeting (AGM) of the Jane Austen Society of North American (JASNA) celebrated Austen’s 250th birthday coming up December 16. The AGM was full of sound and fury, signifying a great deal. Well, maybe not fury, but energy. Lots of it. And great scholarship. All on the topic of the genius of…
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Rules of the Road for Regency Language
Writers of Austen-based or broader Regency fiction regularly discuss the use of language by a modern writer for that period. I, too, reflect on my approach—which I considered for quite a while in my historical fiction based on Jane Austen’s life. For general language, I take the actor’s approach when preparing to play an historical…
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What Did Jane Austen Look Like?
What did Jane Austen look like? No one really knows. Which is to say: We know fairly precisely her size and shape, but only a little of what her face looks like. A forensic analysis done by clothing expert Hilary Davidson in 2015 details Austen’s figure. Davidson has since written books on Austen and Regency…
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Another Stroll Through Bath’s Pleasure Gardens
In the middle of the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, many places in England—and especially Bath—have been awash in celebrations. I was unable to attend, but the busyness of the town, as related by residents and tourists, caused me to revisit and re-enjoy my own travels there a few years back.…
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Thaddeus Ever Valiant
There’s always the hope that there might remain a brilliant female writer from the 1700s or early 1800s who has been lost to obscurity. That’s why, over the years, I go back once in a while to read someone new to me. One of these is Jane Porter, who along with her sister Maria became…
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Did Austen Speak Posh?
In our last blog, we heard how Shakespeare’s English much more resembled the accents of the provinces than the “proper” English favored today by actors and newscasters, the latter being an accent called “Received Pronunciation” or “RP.” Jane Austen had knowledge of and appreciation for Shakespeare. There are parallels between her social comedies and his, Willoughby reads…