JANE AUSTEN FESTIVAL

As one of those people who invariably comes to everything late, I was reminded last night of the Jane Austen Festival in Canberra from 15-19 April 2010.



Last year Bellsknits went and I really enjoyed her posts, including her visit to the Festival. It looked like fun, and since I’m a big Jane Austen fan (and I missed the JA Festival in Bath last year when I visited the UK) I thought it would be nice to go to what looks like the biggest JA Festival in Australia.

Now the time is here— and 75% of tickets have been sold—I’m faced with deciding whether to go … and I don’t know whether I really want to do it on my “own”.

So what I’m wondering is … Is anybody out there in blogland planning to go? Any days in particular? Any events in particular?

Oh … either Mr H or my mother will probably go to Canberra with me, but they're both as quiet as a mouse and will probably be off doing their own thing.

Project 365 Tue 14 Jul 09

DAMN
I haven't used the VCR in months ... except to watch the Persuasion VCR tapes I borrowed from the Jane Austen Society of Melbourne.

And, which I thought I'd returned after an earlier debacle.

Well, the saga continues because when I went to use the VCR to check a tape Horace wanted to use to record ... there was Part One of the two tape set still in the VCR.


The evidence!

I am so p*#sed with myself.

I won't get the chance to return the tape until the end of the year ... and I'll probably be banned from ever borrowing anything ever again!

And it won't be them who bans me but myself.

What a nuisance!

Project 365 Sun 31 May 09

EARLY 19TH CENTURY CLOTHING
I arranged to meet Suzanne at the NGV to see the exhibition of clothing during the time of Austen ... but Suzanne forgot me and I ended up seeing it alone. Woops! LOL!


From the wall at the start of the exhibition.

I really enjoyed the exhibition; and why wouldn't I when it combined two of my favourite things: Jane Austen and clothing.

One of things I'd really like to do is make a dress from 1795-1810 and I'm determined to get the trimmings etc as authentic as possible. And the point of making it is to go to the Jane Austen Festival held in Bath in September each year. I won't get to do it this year ... but Auntie Mary, interested in coming with me in a couple of years time?

I was absolutely batty for one of the dresses at the exhibition, made in 1806, and I concentrated all my photos on this one. It was so simple and yet so pretty at the same time, and exactly what I imagined 'my' dress from would look like.


A detail from my favourite dress.

And then I wandered around the NGV for a little while later looking for examples of the sort of things people during this period would have in their homes or art and found a few lovely examples.


A detail from a chandelier.


And the prettiest milk jug.

Project 365 Fri 15 May 09

OF JA AND PERSUASION VCR TAPES
After taking the time to join JASM and go to the first meeting I missed the second through a stupid mistake.

The newsletter in late April and announced the meeting wouldn't be held as usual on the last Saturday of the month because of Anzac Day. That made perfect sense, but for some reason I remembered the new date as Saturday 9 May.

Here's the thing; why would the meeting be changed to the day before Mother's Day? And the answer was that it wasn't. It was changed to the Saturday between Anzac Day and Mother's Day!

So, the weekend of the meeting came and went, I got sick and hoped I wouldn't miss the meeting because I needed to return the Persuasion VCR tapes I borrowed.


The now overdue VCR tapes of Persuasion.

Once I started feeling better I checked the date because it just didn't seem right ... and the rest is history. And, what's more, I also missed the presentation about clothing during the Regency period.

Grrrrrrrrrrrr and double grrrrrrrrrr!

Project 365 Sun 1 Mar 09

JANE AUSTEN SOCIETY OF MELBOURNE
Yesterday I went to my very first meeting of the Jane Austen Society of Melbourne.


The entrance to the building where the meetings are held.

The members were mostly women (obviously) with an average age of about 65. But I was expecting that and I found an interesting mix of people there with many similar interests, including one very well read woman who told me the Dickens society meets at the same location on a Friday night. Definitely something to think about.

The speaker for the meeting was Professor Deirdre Coleman, Robert Wallace Chair of English at the University of Melbourne. Her talk was really interesting and of obvious relevant for me as she spoke about the theme of anti-slavery that flows through Mansfield Park. This seemed to be the first time some had heard about this, but it nicely complimented what I'd learnt from the last group read on www.pemberley.com of Mansfield Park, which also focussed on how widely read and abolitionist in views Jane Austen was.

I hope the future meetings are as good and I look forward to the next one in a few months time.

Group Read - Persuasion

I am an unashamed lover of Jane Austen and all her books, but none of them gets me as much as Persuasion. It's the story of Anne Elliot, a woman who lost her love Captain Wentworth at 19 because she was persuaded it was in both their best interests and his return 9 years later. The plot is so well crafted I can't imagine anything better, and parts of it are amongst the best I've ever read. The letter from Captain Wentworth to Anne when he redeclares his love for her is second to none. And I've just been lucky enough to finish a group read of this amazing book over the last four weeks.



People almost universally seem to fall into two camps with Jane Austen: they either love her or dismiss her as a contemporary romance writer, and point the finger at her for writing only about the cares of her class. I can't see her just in these terms because what she does better than anybody else is craft exquisite plots full of amazing three dimensional people. And what else is a writer supposed to do if not that?

I go to the Republic of Pemberley at www.pemberley.com for my daily dose of JA. It's a fantastic site to discuss Jane Austen's books and to hear the views and angles of others who share the same passion. And it's always nice to be in the same space as people who get you.