Posts Tagged ‘Jane Austen’
It’s a Bard! it’s a plain (Jane)! It’s…
Literary Action Figures! Shakespeare, Ms. Austen, plus Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, and Charles Dickens…
Order now, and as a special bonus receive:
(TotH to Brainpickings)
As we save up our allowance, we might recall that it was on this date in 1881 that Charles Darwin published The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms-– the work he considered a more important accomplishment than The Origin of Species (1859).
Coming (Not) Soon (Enough)…
As we negotiate for the Bronte bout, we might recall that it was on this date in 1814 that Percy Bysshe Shelley eloped with then-17-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin… despite the fact that Shelley was already married.
Shelley, the heir to his wealthy grandfather’s estate, had been expelled from Oxford for refusing to acknowledge authorship of a controversial essay. He eloped with his first wife, Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a tavern owner, in 1811. But three years later, Shelley fell in love with the young Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter of a prominent reformer and early feminist writer. Shelley and Godwin fled to Europe, marrying after Shelley’s wife committed suicide in 1816.
Shelley’s inheritance did not pay all the bills, and the couple spent much of their married life abroad, fleeing Shelley’s creditors. While living in Geneva, the Shelleys and their dear friend Lord Byron challenged each other to write a compelling ghost story. Only Mary Shelley finished hers– which she later published as Frankenstein.
We can remember it for you wholesale…
source: James Madison University
The good folks at EU Design, a web hosting and design firm, maintain a compendium of mnemonics…
Mnemonics (pronounced “ne-mon’-ics”) is the art of assisting the memory by using a system of artificial aids – rhymes, rules, phrases, diagrams, acronyms and other devices – all to help in the recall of names, dates, facts and figures.
From English monarchs to the world’s longest rivers, from the periodic elements to the Bond films of Sean Connery, Mnemonics offers over 120 helpful formulae… as the site suggests, “you never know what might just be useful to remember.”
As we prepare to put our answer in the form of a question, we might raise a celebratory cup of tea to the incomparable Jane Austen, born this date in 1775.
Watercolor portrait of Jane Austen believed to be by her sister, Cassandra
Train wrecks past…
Lest we think that our own little corner of the space-time continuum is darker or more fraught than most, The Hope Chest is here with “bad news from the past” to remind us that it has been ever thus…
LAUREL, Del., May 21 [1931]–Weathering the severe drouth which hit the agricultural section, Leon Tyndall suffered a severe injury to his foot which sent him to bed after he had tried to jump from beneath a falling tree.
Scarcely had be recovered when he was taken ill with appendicitis, and had to undergo an operation.
Then an automobile truck killed one of his best mules, and he caught his hand in a ripsaw and severely injured several fingers.
Many, many more in The Hope Chest.
As we cautiously count our blessings, we might recall that on this date in 1816, the incomparable Jane Austen responded to a request from the Prince Regent (who had apparently been among the multitude of admirers of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma, all of which had been published by then) that she write a historical romance, replying that “I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.”
(The foregoing is actually true… still, Happy April Fools Day!)
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