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A long list of things, places and people associated with Austen. Marginalia in this book was very, very interesting. There were corrections in pencil, probably by Abby Talmadge, the original owner of the volume. These include notes about modern occupants of the houses mentioned in Austen, news (like a modern Lord Craven's death), etc.
Memories of Jane Austen by Caroline, her niece, who was a child or adolescent when Jane Austen died.
Five letters in facsimile (18 Nov. 1814, 30 Nov. 1814, 20 Feb. 1817, 13 Mar. 1817, and 23 Mar. 1817 -- all reproduced in Chapman). Handwriting interesting: small, very neat and legible, few cross-outs or blots, lines even. Good examples of the interspacing or overwriting done to maximize space.
Some of these are reprinted in Chapman's edition of the novels, if not all. Interesting that Jane's seem to have a harder, keener edge and are more ironic than the others, and that James are more difficult to solve, but less competent metrically.
This looks like a private copy -- in the margins was written in pencil that the book's author was considered quite a beauty. Only the first ten pages, the first chapter, really, have to do with Jane Austen directly. Chapter 18 is about JE Austen-Leigh writing the Memoir. Interesting trivia include the fact that at the time of his writing about his aunt, JE Austen-Leigh wished to consult Fanny Knatchbull (Knight), but she was too old and senile to help and could not remember where she had put the letters from Jane Austen which she had put in safe-keeping. Upon her death they were found and became the property of Lord Braborne. The sketch of Jane Austen by Cassandra was bequeathed to Charles, and JE Austen-Leigh had it finished so that he could print it in his book; the brass tablet over Jane Austen's grave came from the proceeds of the Memoir.
Very thorough information on a book popular at the time James and Henry Austen were at Oxford. The Farriery figures largely in the brothers' newspaper. Joseph Pote first published Bartlet's Farriery, a collection of remedies for equine illnesses, in 1753. It ran 12 editions by 1788, and was probably written by Pote's brother-in-law, a doctor who practiced on humans.
Not so much interesting for its applicability to Austen studies as a really enlightening look into printing practices in the 18th and 19th centuries.
This biography adds to James Edward Austen-Leigh's the Braborne letters which he did not see when he was writing. It also includes the Zoffany portrait, and spends time trying to prove that James' tastes deeply influenced Jane's.
A very fine book with lovely portraits and illustrations. The last chapter is relevant to Austen family history and its connection with the Knights of Chawton.
The standard stuff, before it became standard. Most interesting is the acceptance of James Edward Austen-Leigh's assertion that James' tastes formed Jane's.
"The Palace of Truth" is in vol. 4, pgs. 159-258. It tells of Phanor, the Genii, who rescues women imprisioned by a jealous fairy and wins a favor, by which he is granted a palace in which no one may lie. All the permutations of the story lead to the inevitable conclusion that telling lies lubricates social interactions and is a necessary part of social intercourse. The Austens had read this story by late in 1789, as it forms the basis of one number of The Loiterer.
Surprisingly, this contains VERY sane advice on child-rearing, sounding close to what parenting manuals say today about the subject. Corporeal punishment, and breaking the spirit of the child, are disapproved and mildly fulminated against as archaic. Interesting. Not what one would expect in some ways.
A very interesting guide to the practices and sights in Oxford, as the title says, at its beginning and now. There is a long section on coeds in the last chapter which would make a good study for those writing about women and Oxford. Though there is no mention of the Austens, this is a good background text.
One can tell from the title what this will be -- it is a petit biography, but though it makes claims to truth, much of the narration seems fictional, romaticized, to say the least. I suppose it would be wrong to expect more, given everything.
This is interesting because it is perhaps the most complete rendering of the Leigh-Perrot case available. The whole thing sounds very mysterious, and given to mythologizing -- among later generations, Mrs. L-P was said to have a continual problem with shop-lifting, though there is no concrete evidence of this. Ives suggests that Jane Austen must have had access to the letters Mrs. L-P wrote while incarcerated, and used them to describe Portsmouth in Mansfield Park: "Cleanliness has ever been his [Mr. L-P's] delight & yet he sees the greasy toast laid by the dirty children on his knees & feels the Small Beer trickle down his sleeves on its way across the table . . . Mrs. Scadding's knife well licked to clean it from fried onions helps me now and then--." Ives also argues that Mrs. L-P became Mrs. Norris.
Lists all editions of Jane Austen's novels to 1929. Also books in her library and some early critical material.
Second only to Lascelles, I think. It is interesting to us in this study as it does not venture a guess about Sophia Sentiment, but it does talk about The Loiterer and Jane Austen, suggesting that it illustrates "the current tastes in fiction [which] were frequently the topic of discussion in the Austen household" (17).
Emphasis is on the "natural and lifelike" in Austen (201). "Jane Austen's literary hour must have been a midday hour: bright, unsuggestive, with objects standing clear, without much shadow or elaborate artistic effect" (208). For Mrs. Ritchie (as for Cecil and others), Austen was content, happy, someone "who belong[s] to us unalienably, . . . whom we seem to have a right to love" (214).
Not as fun as Wood's history of himself and the Civil Wars as they happened in and around Oxford, but a decent look at Oxford at the beginning of the 18th century and the stories about it collected to that time. A good understanding of Latin and Greek, though not requisite would be helpful when reading this book.
The history of Oxford during the Civil Wars, as seen by Anthony Wood. There are lists of people who died, their arms, what college they belonged to. There are frequent plunges into scandal at the time, and jokes. Though it has very little relevance to Austen studies, it is a very interesting book.
To see an unannotated, longer list of books at the Newberry Library