Jane’s making it into the papers quite a bit these days…we are definitely entering (or perhaps firmly within) another Age of Austen.

The Independent mentions Jane Austen in an article about vegetarianism, of all things.

Medical men recommended meatless diets for less lofty reasons. George Cheyne, a celebrated 18th-century physician, was perhaps the earliest “diet doctor”. Grossly obese in younger days, Cheyne learnt of the virtues of an abstemious life from mystical texts. Resorting to milk, seeds and roots, he quickly lost some of his surplus pounds and became an enthusiastic advocate of “low diets”. A prolific writer and busy practitioner, Cheyne claimed that meat damaged the nervous system and forced his wealthy, overweight patients to switch to vegetables.

One of those patients was his publisher, the novelist Samuel Richardson. His famous heroines Pamela and Clarissa were dedicated vegetarians and lived very well on modest quantities of “bread, butter, water, tea, milk, salad, toast and chocolate”.

Jane Austen derided Cheynesque diets in Emma but even she admitted that “composition seems to me Impossible, with a head full of Joints of Mutton”.

She was talking about housekeeping, actually, not eating meat. Way to stretch a point, dude.

In the Times, “Xanadu,” the pseudonymous author of the Single in the City column (paging Bridget Jones, Miss Jones, please pick up the white courtesy phone), writes about a Jane Austen moment that she shared with her mother.

Naturally my mother could not miss the opportunity to highlight the fact that if I was in any way normal I would be wanting to cook, clean and care for a husband who might have a lovely house too.

Tears came to her eyes as she got ready for some dreadful rural gossipy dinner party. She blubbed: “Do you know how embarrassing it is for me to go to these events and be the only mother with an unmarried daughter … ” her voice tailing off sadly. It was such a timeless comment. She was Mrs Bennet and I was Lizzie, although most of the time I felt more like Jane Austen herself, sitting on the window seat gazing out through the rain-slashed window panes.

The only difference was I had a laptop teetering on my lap.

The laptop is simply the modern equivalent of the writing desk.