Happy New Year!

It is New Year's Eve, so we would like to wish you a Happy New Year!


"Kind love and good wishes for a Happy New Year to you all."
--Jane Austen to Althea Bigg, January 24, 1817

Happy Christmas!

"You cannot but have a cheerful and at times even a merry Christmas."

--Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, Dec. 9, 1808

Illustration by Kate Greenaway

{bit of a holiday respite}

Central New Jersey JASNA would like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and Happy New Year!

We'll be taking a little bit of a holiday respite and will return in the New year with more of all things Austen! Enjoy the holiday season!

Thanks to Jane Austen's World for the cool graphic.

Dickens and his “A Christmas Carol”

A Christmas Carol was first published on December 19, 1843.

Emma 2009 Masterpiece Classic Preview

Mark your calendars for January 24th, 2010 at 9:00 pm for the North American premiere of the new miniseries Emma on Masterpiece Classic on PBS. Staring Romola Garai (Atonement, Daniel Deronda) as the handsome, clever and rich heroine Emma Woodhouse, this new 3 part historical drama/comedy will run on three consecutive Sundays: January 24th (2 hours), and January 31st and February 7th (1 hour ea).

Based on Jane Austen’s fourth published novel Emma, this new adaptation is by renowned screenwriter Sandy Welch (Our Mutual Friend, Jane Eyre, North And South) and aired in the UK in four one hour episodes in October 2009. It was jointly produced by the BBC and WGBH. It also stars Jonny Lee Miller (Eli Stone Endgame) as Mr. Knightley, and Sir Michael Gambon (Cranford) as Mr. Woodhouse. PBS has created a beautiful Emma page on their Masterpiece Classic website and this amusing video.

Thanks to Austenprose for article and links.

Happy Birthday Jane!

Today is Jane Austen’s birthday, 234 years ago!
To quote her father in his letter to Mrs. Walter on Dec 17, 1775: “You have doubtless been for some time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age grown such bad reckoners but so it was, for Cassey certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago: however last night the time came, and without a great deal of warning, everything was soon happily over. We have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion. She is to be Jenny, and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy. Your sister thank God is pure well after it, and sends her love to you and my brother…” (Austen Papers, 32-3)

Video at Morgan Library

As you know The Morgan Library & Museum is currently showing Austen writings and Austen related material in their exhibition, "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy." As part of the exhibit, The Morgan created a 15 minute video that is shown in the gallery, with JASNA's Sandy Lerner as one of the participants. If you can't come to the exhibit, (and we hope that you will all make it), then at least you can view the video if you
click here.

Recipe for Aunt Glo’s Pecan Balls

"These cookies, created by my great-aunt Glo, have been a family favorite for decades. She bakes several batches for us every year… I always have a few as soon as I wake up on Christmas morning!" –Katie Farmand, associate editor

Aunt Glo’s Pecan Balls
Makes 7 dozen
2 cups softened butter

5 tablespoons sugar

4 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 cups ground pecans

4 cups all-purpose flour

Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 275º. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.

2. In a large bowl and using an electric mixer at high speed, cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla extract. Add ground pecans and flour; mix until combined. Roll into bite-size balls.

3. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Cookies will be brown on the bottom but still pale on top.

4. Remove from oven; set aside to cool for 3 minutes. In a large bowl, roll warm cookies in confectioners’ sugar. Cool to room temperature, then roll a second time in confectioners’ sugar until cookies are fully coated.

Recipe from http://www.teatimemagazine.com/

A Christmas Rewrite, as Dickens Edits Dickens

A Christmas Rewrite, as Dickens Edits Dickens
By ALISON LEIGH COWAN

Here is part of the article:
Updated, Dec. 4 Alison Cowan and Declan Kiely, a curator at the Morgan Library and Museum, discussed Dickens’s manuscript for “A Christmas Carol” in an interview that aired Dec. 4 on WQXR. Listen online here.

It is an enduring mystery of English literature: What secrets lie entombed beneath the thick scribbles that Charles Dickens made as he wrote, and rewrote, the 66 pages of “A Christmas Carol” in 1843?

The manuscript of this classic holiday ghost story, written in six weeks to raise much-needed cash, is housed at the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan, where it bears all of Dickens’s additions and subtractions in his own hand.

On page 3, he inserts “his eyes sparkled” to amplify the portrait of Scrooge’s nephew, whose beneficence is crucial to the plot.

On page 12, where Scrooge takes Marley’s ghost to be evidence not of the supernatural, but of his own indigestion, (“more of gravy than of grave,”) he converts the offending bit of food from being a “spot of mustard” to a less digestible “blot of mustard.”
Scholars, on occasion, have been given access to the manuscript, or facsimiles, to learn more about these shapings and shadings.

Michael Slater, an expert on Victorian literature at the University of London, said he, for one, has always admired Dickens’s decision to trim a waggish diatribe about Hamlet from page 1. He suspects Dickens made the cut after concluding “it was too much of a digression” or just bad for business to be “making too much fun of Shakespeare.’’

For the public, the opportunity to spot such finds has been limited. The manuscript is exhibited each holiday season at the Morgan, but as a matter of expedience, only one page is put on view each year, under glass, in the sumptuous former library of the financier John Pierpont Morgan.
This year, however, the Morgan agreed to allow The New York Times to photograph and display the entire handwritten manuscript online.

Find the rest of the story at the following link:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/a-christmas-rewrite-as-dickens-edits-dickens/?emc=eta1

"Longbourn's Unexpected Matchmaker" reimagines "Pride and Prejudice"

Exciting new novelist Emma Hox recently released “Longbourn’s Unexpected Matchmaker,” a reimagining on how literary classic Pride and Prejudice would have been different if Colonel Fitzwilliam had accompanied Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy to Netherfield.

"LONGBOURN'S UNEXPECTED MATCHMAKER": Emma Hox uses the characters from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to create an all new stand-alone story with "Longbourn's Unexpected Matchmaker." The novel ties up many of the loose ends that Jane Austen let her readers speculate about, such as: How did the Bennet entail come about? Why do Mrs. Bennet's nerves bother her so? How did the eldest two Bennet daughters turn into such ladies when their family is so inappropriate? Why does Mr. Bennet always hide in his library with his books? In order to come to this greater understanding, Emma altered two main events, which, in turn, take a spiraling effect at altering Pride and Prejudice into a fantastic story that everyone will enjoy. Emma begins by having Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam accompany Mr. Charles Bingley and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy to Netherfield. She also has Mr. Darcy befriend a mysterious member of the Meryton neighborhood, who refuses an introduction but who has a close relationship with the Bennet household. By altering these two events, you get the novel “Longbourn's Unexpected Matchmaker.” http://www.rhemalda.com/

Country Dance * New York

Country Dance * New York will be celebrating Jane Austen's birthday on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 by dancing dances that Jane and her heroines might have danced, and readings of saucy extracts from her letters and novels.

Callers will be JASNA members: Beverly Francis and Elizabeth Freeman.

There will be workshops at 7pm and dancing from 7:30 to 10:15 at
The Church of the Village
201 West 13th Street, NYC

For more information visit http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102872091961&s=31&e=001FMhuNZNOtCAnZKpOWBCQjHPCtdEoB1lJ8zY-oC8MrkkE1Z4EDGkQY1wv2spRafGOyp-9TSPOeogcevC9jlkWP7Peuy1v5Ad671d4rRjg9pI= or call 212-459-4080.

Lady Susan opportunity

Colin Firth, feeling 'Single'

Featured in the LA Times-here is the whole article for your consideration:

Colin Firth, feeling 'Single'

The actor finds an emotionally rich role in the Tom Ford film.
By Tina Daunt December 2, 2009

Colin Firth first came to international attention as Mr. Darcy, the thinking woman's sex object in "Pride & Prejudice," and then as Bridget Jones' slightly dazed consort, conspicuously named Mark Darcy. But the role of his life may be as George Falconer, the main character in Tom Ford's adaptation of the 1964 novel "A Single Man" by Christopher Isherwood.

Isherwood began the novel -- considered the gay movement's first great work of literature -- as a kind of thought experiment when his own longtime relationship with painter Don Bacardi seemed about to come apart. How, he wondered, could he cope with the loss of his life's love?

To work that out, he built "A Single Man" around the day middle-aged English academic Falconer receives the news of his own lover's death. The result was a novel -- set in 1962 Los Angeles -- of loss and love that speaks in universal terms.Fashion designer Tom Ford read the book as a young man in the 1980s and was moved by its honesty and simplicity. When he read the book again three years ago, while searching for the right project for his first movie, the book struck him in a completely different way. It was a spiritual story, of sorts, about a man who could not see his future amid his isolation and crushing sorrow. Ford ultimately decided it would be his directorial debut. But where would he find his George?It wasn't an easy question, since a cinematic treatment of "A Single Man" comes close to being a one-man play. He found his protagonist in an unlikely place: the London premiere last summer of the musical "Mamma Mia!"Over lunch recently in Beverly Hills, Firth -- one of the stars of the ABBA stage-to-film adaptation -- said Ford sat in the row behind him and watched him carefully at a cast party afterward. A short time later, he received an e-mail from the fashion designer asking if he would consider playing the lead in "A Single Man." Firth, who at the time wasn't familiar with Isherwood beyond his book "The Berlin Stories," was intrigued. "I was impressed that Tom picked this material," Firth said, casually dressed after a long week of events promoting the movie, which opens in Los Angeles on Dec. 11. "It could not be dismissed as a fashion designer's vanity project. And even though I didn't know Tom at the time, I wouldn't have done that anyway."

Ford sent Firth the script, which he had written himself, and a copy of Isherwood's book. He pushed back the filming schedule to accommodate Firth, then paid the actor a personal visit, meeting him for dinner at the 1960s Bond-esque glamour restaurant Scott's in London."At first I wasn't sure if I could do anything special with the character George," Firth said. "But then, in many ways, George is consistent with what I normally do: He's a man around my age. He's English. He seems rather dry. He just happens to be in a state of despair for a very specific reason. He has lost someone, and he doesn't know how he'll live. He's feeling suffocated by life, and he's reached a point where he doesn't want to exist."

Like Ford, Firth came away feeling passion for the story and, specifically, for George."He's a man who really starts to understand the beauty of life at the moment he thinks he's letting go," Firth said.Filming started almost immediately, at a Modernist home in Glendale that stood in for the light-splashed white cottage Isherwood and Bacardi shared in Santa Monica Canyon for so many years.

"It came together very quickly," Firth said.From the start, though, the actor knew that the biggest challenge in the film would be the scene in which he receives the news of his lover's death. It begins with a phone call -- polite, almost clipped -- and ends with a heart-wrenching portrait of emotional anguish."It's very difficult as an actor to begin a scene in one emotional state and end it in another," Firth said. "

And since I had never worked with Tom before, I wasn't sure how things would be. The script wasn't specific. It was just 'phone call, dialogue, tears.' "The actor quickly realized that Ford was trusting him to follow his instincts."There was a serenity on the set," Firth said. "I was given the space to engage and to feel it. Tom didn't bombard us with instructions; we weren't given any really. But you knew by the way he said, 'That was great,' if it was or wasn't great."He has this extraordinary talent for making his intentions your intentions, for making his vision your vision by just allowing people to be at their best. I don't think I'm any better or any worse than my material. Well, maybe I'm worse. I just played it as I saw it."

With complete quiet and few people on the set, Firth performed the phone call scene three times. Ford stood by, quietly. "He didn't cut the scene," Firth said. "He just let the [camera] magazine work its way out each time."Actor and director also discovered they had something else in common: an interest in faces and the power of facial expressions on-screen. "To me, cinema at its most exciting is about the face," Firth said.

Since the movie began being shown at film festivals, Firth, 49, has been showered with acclaim. Although he has long been considered a fine actor, some critics believe his subtly powerful performance in "A Single Man" is his best yet. But to those curious about his decision to play a gay man, Firth has little patience: "The movie is about isolation and the agony of loving someone who isn't there anymore," he said. "It's universal. It doesn't matter what your sexual [orientation] is. Love is love."

December wallpaper

Looking back at Ackermann's Repository. The original Ackermann's Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, Manufactures, &c. was published monthly from 1809-1829 and featured a pair of fashion plates in addition to other illustrations and articles covering a variety of topics. These delicate aquatint illustrations and lovely fashions continue to delight and inspire us two hundred years later.

Throughout 2009, new desktop wallpapers will be posted each month showcasing two fashion plates: one from 1809 and the other from a different year during Jane Austen's lifetime. Enjoy a year-long tour through this popular late Georgian-Regency publication!

http://www.solitary-elegance.com/

What really killed Jane Austen?

An article recently featured on CNN Entertainment explores the cause of Jane Austen's death. Here is the whole article:


By Richard Allen Greene, CNN
December 2, 2009 5:37 p.m. EST

London, England (CNN) -- It is a truth universally acknowledged -- or nearly so -- that Jane Austen, the author of "Pride and Prejudice," died of a rare illness called Addison's disease, which robs the body of the ability to make critical hormones.

Katherine White doesn't believe it.

White, herself a sufferer of Addison's disease, has studied Austen's own letters and those of her family and friends, and concluded that key symptoms just don't match what's known about the illness.

The disease -- a failure of the adrenal glands -- was unknown in Austen's day, first having been identified nearly 40 years after she died in 1817 at the age of 41.

It was a doctor named Zachary Cope who first proposed that Addison's disease had killed Austen -- a much beloved novelist whose social comedies continue to sell briskly and inspire movies starring the likes of Keira Knightley, Donald Sutherland, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant. (That's not to mention homages like the Bollywood-inspired "Bride and Prejudice" and this year's unlikely bestseller "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.")

Cope's article, published in the British Medical Journal in 1964, came to White's attention a couple of years ago.

"When I read the summary that Zachary Cope had done of her symptoms, I thought, well, that's not right," White told CNN.

She zeroed in on a comment Austen made in a letter to a friend less than two months before she died: "My head was always clear, and I had scarcely any pain."

That's not what Addison's sufferers normally say, White says.

"People tend to get a thumping headache and feel like they have the hangover from hell," she said.

Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, who died of Addison's disease in 1906, compared her own suffering to being crucified, White observed.

Patients also tend to have difficulty remembering words, and suffer from slurred speech, sleepiness and confusion.

Austen, by contrast, dictated a 24-line comic poem to her sister less than 48 hours before she died.

White is not the first to dispute the theory that Addison's disease killed Austen. British biographer Claire Tomalin suggested in a 1997 book that lymphoma was the culprit.
White finds that, too, unlikely.

She suspects the answer is much simpler: tuberculosis.

Tomalin "was still thinking [of] first world [diseases]. She went for lymphoma on the advice of doctors," White argued.

"If you think about TB [tuberculosis], which was rife in Jane Austen's day, statistically speaking, [the cause of death] was far more likely to have been TB from unpasteurized milk rather than an obscure condition like lymphoma," White said.

Austen biographer John Halperin isn't sure it matters what killed Austen -- but whatever it was, it affected her writing as her life drew to a close, he said.

Her last completed novel, "Persuasion," is "a far more sad and autumnal book than any of the others," he said. "You get the sense that decisions delayed never return. That came home to her very clearly in 'Persuasion.' The tone is a very sad one, even though the heroine does marry the man she loves in the end," Halperin said.

In fact, Austen's papers show she considered another ending in which the heroine did not marry the man she loved.

Halperin believes Austen died of Addison's disease, he said, though he points out that his biography, "The Life of Jane Austen," was first published in 1984, and that there has been significant research into the disease since then.

White, who is trained as a social scientist, not a doctor, is the coordinator for the Addison's Disease Self-Help Group's clinical advisory group in the United Kingdom. She published a paper this week in the journal Medical Humanities making her case.

The paper, "Jane Austen and Addison's Disease: an unconvincing diagnosis," admits that some of Austen's symptoms were consistent with adrenal failure, and points out that we may not know all of Austen's ailments because her sister Cassandra edited or destroyed many of Jane's letters.
But Kenneth Burman, an endocrinology expert at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, finds White's argument plausible.

Like White, he speculates that Austen could have suffered for years from some disease that affected her adrenal glands but that the actual cause of death was different.

"It's most likely that she had chronic adrenal insufficiency and that the final cause could have been secondary infection such as TB," he said.

He, too, doubts Austen had lymphoma, which tends to produce enlarged lymph nodes in the neck, swelling in the stomach because of enlarged liver or spleen, and salt cravings -- none of which were documented in Austen's final days.

"I agree completely" that it's simply statistically more likely that the novelist would have had tuberculosis than lymphoma, he said.

But, he cautioned, we'll never know for sure.

"Retrospective diagnosis is very speculative," he said. "It's unknowable with certainty."
Or, as Austen herself wrote, "Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken."

Text and images from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/books/12/02/jane.austen.death/index.html

Victorian Christmas at Ringwood Manor

Be sure to visit Ringwood Manor this season for a Victorian Christmas. Just a little after Jane Austen's time, the Victorian period is a beautiful era of celebration. Ringwood Manor is a gorgeous example of architecture and houses an exquisite display of furniture and art-some even from the Colonial (aka Regency era) era. The Victorian Christmas is Saturday & Sunday, Dec. 5 & 6; Saturday & Sunday, Dec. 12 & 13 from 11am-5pm.

Ringwood Manor is described on: www.ringwoodmanor.com/

The website states, "The Forges and Manor of Ringwood is an historic center, sacred ground to the Native Americans and a site of important American developments, both industrial and social, during the Colonial, Federal, and Victorian periods. The manor and the surrounding lands provide a window into New Jersey history.

During the American Revolution, Ringwood was a supply center, transportation route, strategic headquarters, and site of George Washington's critical defense mapping agency. Ringwood and the surrounding Highlands iron works supplied the ore for three wars, urban growth and rail systems.

Later, Ringwood grew into a "Great Estate," a place which influenced the flow of our nation's cultural, political and industrial history. Due to the influence of Abram Hewitt and Peter Cooper, Ringwood was referred to as the "second White House."

With historical structures in an original setting (on 582 acres of the original 38,000) and extensive historical collections illustrative of family life, community, industry and culture, The Forges and Manor of Ringwood is recognized as a National Historic Landmark District and a unique repository of American history.

NYU class on Jane Austen

EXPLORING ENGLAND IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF JANE AUSTEN (X09.9263)
NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS)

Sect. 1: Thursdays 11:00am--12:40pm, Feb. 11--Apr. 22 (10 sessions; no class March 18), $430
Meets at NYU Midtown Center at 11 West 42nd Street

From stately mansions to medieval cities, many of England's most historic places are uniquely associated with Jane Austen. The novelist stayed in medieval Southampton, Georgian Bath, and the ancient port of Bristol; visited relatives in breathtaking Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire; and resided in the tiny village of Chawton and in the cathedral city of Winchester. Drawing on her descriptive letters, discover Austen's insights about the history, culture, important buildings, lifestyles, and treasures of these and the many other places that she encountered on her travels.

Taught by Lorella Brocklesby, adjunct professor of humanities, cultural historian.
Call (212) 998-7200 for information or (212) 998-7150 to register or visit http://www.scps.nyu.edu/.

Celebrate Jane Austen with CNJ-JASNA!

Please join JASNA Central New Jersey for a birthday toast to Jane Austen at the Cranbury Inn, 21 South Main Street, Cranbury, New Jersey on Saturday, December 5, 2009 from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

We will celebrate Austen’s 234th birthday, plan and discuss the year’s upcoming programs together, and share our love of all things Austen.

Should you be so inclined, please feel free to bring a short reading selection of your choice to get us all in the spirit. Please RSVP by Dec. 1 to centraljerseyJASNA@yahoo.com. Thank you!

A short history of the Cranbury Inn: In the mid 1600's in the center of the colony of New Jersey by Cranberry Creek, a mill town began to develop along an old Indian trail that had widened into a road. This road connected the colonies and was becoming a main thoroughfare for colonial travelers. In 1697 Cranberry Towne received its charter from England. With increasing development, a need arose in central New Jersey for a place to eat and drink, get fresh horses, and spend the night; thus in the mid 1700's our taverns were built to meet these needs of the travelers passing through this area. After the colonies declared their independence from the motherland this business officially established itself in 1780. What is now The Cranbury Inn has been functioning as a place to eat and drink since the mid 1700's.