The Dandy Chargers — 2014 Riding Season

A cross-post from The Regency Redingote:

Thanks to a dedicated group of aficionados known as the Dandy Chargers, the velocipede, which Georgette Heyer fans know as the pedestrian curricle, is not a thing of the past. Each year, the Dandy Chargers don Regency dress and ride their historically accurate "dandy-horses" at various historic estates and other venues in Great Britain. Thus, those who would like to see these vehicles in action as they might have appeared during the Regency have an opportunity to do so at one of the Dandy Chargers’ appearances this year.

The 2014 schedule of the Dandy Chargers fourteenth riding season …

Continue reading “The Dandy Chargers — 2014 Riding Season”

Jane Austen’s Book is 200 Years Old

 Sense & Sensibility is 200 Years Old

Did you know that Jane Austen’s first book is 200years old? 

Originally published in 1811, Jane Austen’s first published novel is now 200 years old and has been revered as a classic romance of manners. Becca from our friends at The Jane Austen Gift Shop in Bath, UK, has news about the book and a beautiful Special Leatherbound Edition.

Continue reading “Jane Austen’s Book is 200 Years Old”

Jane Austen’s ‘The Watsons’ sold at auction

Jane Austen‘s unfinished Bath novel sold for £993k on Saturday, July 16, 2011.

austen manuscript
The Austen Manuscript

An amazing announcement from the Bath Chronicle and read more of their article….

An unfinished novel which Jane Austen started writing when she was living in Bath has been sold at auction for £993,000.

The handwritten parchment for The Watsons, which experts believe was only a quarter completed, has been sold by Sotheby’s to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. ​ The Austen manuscript It had been expected to fetch £200,000, but the rare nature of the work and the fact that it is the earliest surviving manuscript by Austen, meant it went for much more. It is believed to have been started in 1804, while she was living in Bath, but is believed to have abandoned it after the death of her father the following year.

Holly Newton, from Bath’s Jane Austen Centre, said: “She started the book when she was living in Bath and there is speculation about why she didn’t finish it.

“One theory is that the storyline was too close to home, too autobiographical. Also, she wasn’t particularly settled or happy when living in Bath. There were financial problems, her father died when she was living here, so it has been suggested that she had a lull in her writing when she was here because she wasn’t settled.”

The only surviving manuscripts of Austen’s completed novels are two draft chapters of Persuasion, which are kept at the British Library, her younger work Lady Susan, which is at the Morgan Library in New York, and Sanditon, which is at King’s College, Cambridge.

Ms Newton added that she was not surprised The Watsons had sold for such a large sum of money. She said: “Original Jane Austen-related artefacts would always go for a lot of money. There has been a recent surge in popularity and there is so much interest in her life and work. ……There aren’t many artefacts from her life, so these kind of pieces give us a real insight into how she worked.”

Experts believe Emma – the headstrong and independent-minded heroine of the novel – is based on the author herself.

via (no longer online) This is Bath | Bath Jane Austen The Watsons sold auction.

Jane Austen Centre in Bath, UK

The Jane Austen Centre is a permanent exhibition which tells the story of Jane’s Bath experience – the effect living there had on her and her writing.

Who wants to go?  I do!

So come and have a look with me.

Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents and visitors. She paid two long visits here towards the end of the eighteenth century, and from 1801 to 1806 Bath was her home. Her intimate knowledge of the city is reflected in two of her novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, which are largely set in Bath.

The city is still very much as Jane Austen knew it, preserving in its streets, public buildings and townscapes the elegant well-ordered world that she portrays so brilliantly in her novels. Now the pleasure of exploring Jane Austen’s Bath can be enhanced by visiting the Jane Austen Centre in Gay Street. Here, in a Georgian town house in the heart of the city, the visitor can find out more about Bath in Jane Austen’s time and the importance of Bath in her life and work.

The Exhibition Information about the Centre’s permanent exhibition

The Regency Tea Rooms Award winning Tea Rooms up on the 2nd floor of the Centre

Jane Austen Walking tours Take a magical trip around the city with us

Jane Austen Quiz Test yourself with our online quiz

Free e-newsletter Keep up to date with the latest Jane Austen news.

Related articles

  • Jane Austen’s Book is 200 Years Old (main.thebeaumonde.com)