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Showing posts from June, 2013

Jane Austen, Lyme Regis and Captain Wentworth

I've just been to Lyme Regis - the weather was wonderful last week - no stormy seas as in the picture shown. I love this print which shows the old assembly rooms at Lyme Regis . Sadly, they were knocked down some years ago to make way for a car park, but we do have a description of them that was written by Constance Hill in her book, Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends. Her writing inspired my own for a chapter in Searching for Captain Wentworth . My heroine Sophie has travelled back in time to be with her ancestors, the Elliot family who live next door to Jane Austen in Bath. Sophie and her family are in Bath when the unexpected arrival of Jane's brother, Lieutenant Charles Austen, leaves Sophie feeling both excited and nervous. She knows she is falling in love with him and yet knows that it must be a hopeless case ...  I dressed with great care, choosing a fine, Indian muslin, embroidered with flowers and French knots along the hem and down

A Jane Austen Postbag and an Austen/Keats event!

I've been very lucky to receive two lovely books in the post this week - they are being published by Shire Books in July, and I'm sure will be of great interest for those of you who collect all things Jane! From prize-winning historical novelist Louise Allen , this book presents eight walks through both the London Jane Austen knew and the London of her novels! Follow in Jane's footsteps to her publisher's doorstep and the Prince Regent's vanished palace, see where she stayed when she was correcting proofs of Sense and Sensibility and accompany her on a shopping expedition - and afterwards to the theatre. In modern London the walker can still visit the church where Lydia Bennett married Wickham, stroll with Elinor Dashwood in Kensington Palace Gardens or imagine they follow Jane's naval officer brothers as they stride down Whitehall to the Admiralty. From well-known landmarks to hidden corners, these walks reveal a lost London that can still come alive i