Category: daily life
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Regency Childbirth
Forceps, anesthesia, and hot, spiced wine: What was it like to give birth in Regency England?
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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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Just What Does That Mean?
Wonder about some British slang and what it means? Try to figure out what these ones are.
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Plans for 2026
It has been a few years since I’ve done this and it’s probably long overdue. There have been several changes happening in my life over the last few years, but the last time I “mapped them out” in a January post was before Always Austen started in 2023. Since that time, my husband retired; I…
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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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On this day…1700-the Regency, England
Did you know some significant historical events happened before Christmas and the day after the holiday? On December 24, 1716: 24 December (4 January 1717 New Style) – Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic signed the Triple Alliance[3] in an attempt to maintain the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Britain having signed a preliminary alliance with…
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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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Cleanliness is Next to Modern-ness
Good morrow, dear readers. Many of my American readers are likely awakening from their turkey comas; my family is struggling with our lasagne coma. (Yes, we have lasagne for Thanksgiving dinner.) However, I hope every one of my dear readers enjoyed Netherfield Ball Day (otherwise known as November 26th to the non-Austen-enlightened world)! Balls in Georgian England must have been very different from…
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Pull Out Your Cloaks and Coats
The time of the year has come to pull out the cloak, coat, pelisse, wraps, and spencers. At least, it is for those of us who live in climates that have winter from November/December to March/April and have frosted fields, snow on the ground for months on end, and the weather can remain at freezing…
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“Bright Ideas in a Bygone Era: Regency Lighting”
Greetings, friends! It is that time of year when the days grow shorter, the nights stretch longer, and we long to decorate every conceivable surface with lights. Because if it’s not dazzling, is it even worth looking at? 🙂 We in the modern age enjoy the magic of illumination with a flick of a switch…