Alert Janeite Joan was delighted to see a BBC television report about Jane Austen’s House during a recent trip to the UK, and was able to find it on the BBC site and send it to us.

It’s not just Jane Austen’s writing that’s stood the test of time, her home is faring well too.

It is now a museum dedicated to celebrating her life and works and attracts 37,000 visitors each year - the spate of film and TV adaptations of Jane Austen novels has no doubt boosted numbers.

If the museum gets £500,000 in lottery funding, visitors will get to see a little more. Expansion plans include renovating Jane Austen’s kitchen, currently closed the the public, as well as developing a visitors centre beside the house.

There’s a video report, too.

Baja Janeite sent us a link to a travel article about a visit to Chawton.

The house was exactly the size I imagined; comfortable, but not small. There were the amber crosses that Charles Austen, Jane’s seafaring brother, had given to her and her sister, Cassandra — famous to us Janeites. On the door leading to the staircase, a sign warned that it squeaked, and said Jane liked it that way so she could hide her manuscripts if she heard someone coming.

Then, there it was: Jane’s writing table. I stood and stared, amazed that she could write a brilliant work like Persuasion on such a tiny table. It was beautiful to me. It looked so well-loved and well-used.

In related news, Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to an article about an artist working on a sculpture that will grace Austen Court in Basingstoke, the town where Jane Austen went to assemblies as a young lady living in Steventon.

The pyramid-shaped sculpture, which is four feet tall and made from Portland limestone, features four aspects of Basingstoke including references to Jane Austen, the Basingstoke Canal, Basingstoke as a new town and the town crest with a dragon and St Michael.

It looks to us from the accompanying photo that there is a side with a quill pen and books–very likely the Jane Austen reference. It looks lovely.

Beliefnet has put together a photo gallery of the Top 10 Spiritual Jane Austen Places in the UK, based on Lori Smith’s Book A Walk With Jane Austen. The places are spiritual in the religious sense and in the Janeite sense as well.

The Telegraph has a piece about traveling to the places where Jane Austen lived, including Bath, Steventon, and Chawton. Of Bath:

But it’s still a glorious place. When we arrived it was flooded with light and filled with teatime chatter. A musical trio played in one corner, much as their forebears must have done when the heroine of Northanger Abbey, Catherine Morland, first walked in, open-mouthed in wonder, her eyes “here, there, and everywhere”.

We weaved towards the four-headed pump spouting its warm, sulphurous waters. From the window, we caught a glimpse of the Roman Baths below. For once we had the advantage over Austen, as the great watery Temple was only properly excavated in 1897, 80 years after the author’s death.

Thank you!!!! People forget that the Roman baths weren’t a feature of Bath in Jane Austen’s time–they were aware of them but they had not yet been excavated.

After a anachronistic “Minerva Smoothie”

Anachronistic? Wouldn’t that be kind of like a syllabub?

TopLots Heritage Auctions, a fundraising event for museums in the UK, is auctioning a stay at Chawton Library, with accommodations in the converted apartments in the stables and access to non-public areas of the Great House. Sounds like a great cause and a once in a lifetime opportunity to us–open your wallets and bid generously!

Jane Austen Fan Trips is offering a Pride and Prejudice Tour in September 2008. The 9-day, 8-night tour will include stops in Chawton and Winchester and estates in the surrounding area with which Jane Austen was familiar, as well as visits to several estates associated with various films based on her novels. The tour also includes several days in Bath, including a workshop, walking tour, and a Regency Ball. Check out the link for all the details.

So, three down, four to go, counting Miss Austen Regrets. We’re actually rather excited about this one. We just have a gut feeling that it’s not going to completely stink. But then we’re a glass-half-full kind of blog, if you haven’t noticed.

Mopping up the post-mortem for MP08, Alert Janeites Christiane and Lisa sent us this review from the Boston Globe.

Tomorrow night, Piper takes on Fanny Price, the shy, morally sound heroine of Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park.” And Piper wins, big-time, as she pulls poor, pious Fanny over onto the Billie Piper side of life. In this third adaptation in PBS’s Austen “Masterpiece” season, our pre-Victorian introvert is a ravishing wild child who recalls Madonna in a Herb Ritts video, or a stoned hippie chick in “Woodstock,” more than a polite teen in a bonnet and frock. In “Mansfield Park,” tomorrow at 9 p.m. on Channel 2, Fanny’s rather rockin’.

Now, there’s an interesting take–Fanny as the rock-n-roll wild child. Not sure about it, but there you go.

Ultimately, this “Mansfield Park” makes Patricia Rozema’s excellent 1999 version (in which Fanny is made into an Austen-like writer) seem stubbornly loyal to the author.

As Christiane said, he had us up to the “excellent 1999 version.” Huh?

AP, via the San Francisco Chronicle, has an article that combines local and international interest, along with some anecdotes from the set of S&S08.

Dominic Cooper recalled the hash he made initially of one of the novel’s most romantic moments — when his character, the “uncommonly handsome” Willoughby, rescues Marianne Dashwood after she slips and twists her ankle running down a hill.

The torrential rain “did make it quite difficult picking her up from a 90-degree angle on a wet, greasy, green hill and turning back to walk up the hill with a very long, wet coat on,” Cooper recalls. “When I kind of squatted down, the jacket got caught. I fell over immediately and put her head in a ditch.”

Ha!

We found a blogsite dedicated to Miss Austen Regrets. It seems a bit sploggy but we think it’s in earnest. (A hint to the proprietors: To make it seem LESS sploggy, try writing some original content.)

The Jane Austen’s House Museum has seen visitors rise from past productions, and is seeing a surge of interest due to That Made Up Film last year and S&S this year. Also, for our UK readers who are feeling a bit left out of the Complete Jane Austen excitement, there will be an exhibition of costumes from S&S08 at the museum starting in March. If you go, send us a report!

Norman Geras and his wife Adèle went to Chawton Cottage and Winchester.

The house is now a museum, and we walked about it looking at everything in a suitably reverent way. For me the highlight of the visit was this - the table at which she wrote. The very one. I stood before it in wonder.

That’s a pilgrimage that every Janeite should try to make. We haven’t been to Winchester yet, but we will get there one day!

We happened to pop over to the Web site for Jane Austen’s House in Chawton today and noticed that the site has been given a lovely redesign. A little more poking around revealed something new and exciting–a Flash tour of the house and grounds. Check it out!

Sony Classics is having a sweepstakes in relation to their upcoming film The Jane Austen Book Club, with a really fantastic grand prize:

The British travel agency Pathfinders will provide the 2008 tour to England designed especially for members of the Jane Austen Society of North America, Inc.(JASNA) JASNA-sponsored tours offer access to homes and events not available to the general public, such as the annual meeting of the British Jane Austen Society held on the grounds of the manor house owned by Jane Austens brother. Private teas, luncheons, and dinners in historic settings are also part of the tour. A British guide specializing in Austen and her era will accompany the group. The itinerary will center on Jane Austens homes and places she visited, including Steventon, Bath, Chawton, Winchester, and London.

WOW! The first and second prizes are kind of fun, too; we want a poster! (Yes, we know we said we weren’t thrilled with it, but we want it anyway.)

We wish we were in Bath this summer (actually we wish we were there most of the time), but we can enjoy the offerings of the Centre’s Web site anywhere we have Internet access.

Check out the new quiz, which is pretty tough! We are told the questions will rotate occasionally, so check back often.

Also, Chapter 7 of There Must Be Murder has been posted. Catherine gets some distressing news and overhears an interesting conversation, but may herself become the subject of unkind gossip.

The Centre’s online magazine offers its usual excellent selection of new articles, including a period recipe for lemonade, Jane Austen’s final piece of writing, a review of Persuasion 2007, a biography of George III, and instructions for making a chatelaine.

This month’s sample article from Jane Austen’s Regency World is “Rejecting Jane,” in which slightly reworked bits of Jane Austen’s novels were sent to unsuspecting literary agents and publishers, with mixed but predictable results; but if that was the real query letter they sent, we suspect that was the cause of the rejections more than the content of the work.

Forbes has included Jane Austen’s House (the official name for Chawton Cottage) on its list of Ten Must-Visit Private Homes.

Jane Austen’s House Museum in Hampshire, England, is a fine example of a 17th-century cottage, but what makes visiting it worthwhile has more to do with who lived there than what’s left.

Austen penned three novels in the eight-room home: Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion, and she spent time there revising Pride and Prejudice. Through the end of the month, visitors can view the original manuscript of Persuasion, on loan from the British Library, as well as such original pieces as Austen’s piano and dining room furniture.

Take it from us, Gentle Readers: if you ever have a chance to go to Chawton Cottage, do it.

Alert Janeite Philo sent along a link to Kendra’s photos of the P07 costume display at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. There also are some awesome photos of real period gowns from the Museum of Costume and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Check them out!

By Rob Hardy of Kenilworth, England, but soon to be of Minnesota again

First we were taken into the gallery of the chapel and shown the small organ that once belonged to Lord Chandos, an instrument that Handel surely must have played. Then we were taken down into the chapel itself. White plasterwork stood out against the pale blue of the walls, giving the high-ceilinged room the look of a Wedgewood box—although the plasterwork of the chapel was austere compared with the baroque excesses of the saloon, where the apotheosis of Hercules in plaster dominated the great inverted dish of the ceiling. In the saloon, our Mrs. Rushworth had told us, as she would tell us many times on the tour of the house, that we were standing where Jane Austen had stood and were seeing exactly what Jane Austen had seen. Austen’s cousin, Rev. Thomas Leigh, would have greeted her from the top of these steps, just as Mr. Rushworth stood on the steps of Sotherton and greeted his visitors from Mansfield Park. The remarkable thing about the plasterwork, our guide told us, was that Jane Austen never mentions it in her letters.

Jane Austen visited Stoneleigh Abbey, the ancestral home of her mother’s family, in August 1806. Rev. Leigh, rector of Adlestrop, had recently inherited the estate, and had come to look over the property with an eye to making improvements. He would decide to engage the services of the famous landscape designer Sir Humphry Repton, who would conclude that the property required a lake. But this would happen later, two years after Jane Austen’s visit. For the moment, all the talk was of improvements—and Jane took it all in. Eight years later, she would publish Mansfield Park, in which Stoneleigh Abbey becomes Sotherton, the object of the shallow Mr. Rushworth’s schemes for improvement. (more…)

As a followup to our post the other day on St. Swithin’s Church and other architectural details in Bath, a link on JASNA’s Web site led us to The Astoft Gallery of photographs of Jane Austen Country, including photos of the Church of St. Nicholas in Steventon, houses in the neighborhood that Jane would have known, the various houses in Bath where the Austens lived or lodged, and of course Chawton Cottage. Oh, to be in Jane Austen Country in the spring!

(Obviously this is our night for quoting Northanger Abbey.)

The Telegraph has a review of the Royal Crescent Hotel in Bath, complete with P&P opening line hijinks:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a city girl in possession of a stressful job, must be in want of a well-earned break from time to time.

Dorothy was saying that to us just the other day.

Designed in 1767 by the architect John Wood the Younger, the hotel occupies two Grade I listed houses in the centre of the five-hundred-foot long Crescent, with remarkably picturesque views over the city.

Entering the building is like stepping back in time. Everything has been impeccably preserved in its original Regency style both inside and out

Psst…1767 wasn’t the Regency.

Copies of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey had been placed in my suite

Unfortunately for modern womanhood, today’s clothing is not quite as forgiving as the billowing empire-line frocks of Austen’s time, so after all that food, those with a guilty conscience can head to the next-door Bath House to sweat off the calories in the gym, or, preferably, have them massaged, wrapped or steamed away. Gentlemen are of course welcome too, though they have less of an excuse as I suspect 21st-century trousers are generally less binding than breeches.

We had never thought of it quite that way before, but she’s right! It’s not fair! Bring back tight breeches and loose gowns!!! DOROTHY! Make up protest signs directly!

Goucher College will break ground today for a new multi-use facility to be called The Athenaeum, which will house, among other things, the library’s special collections, including the Jane Austen Collection. The plans for the new building are pretty impressive! The Athenaeum will open in autumn 2009.

Since AustenBlog has many new visitors, we take this opportunity to direct our Gentle Readers to Alberta Burke’s notebooks, which Goucher College has scanned and placed online for the enjoyment of all Janeites. The notebooks are sort of the analog predecessor of AustenBlog. Don’t miss all the little tidbits about the 1930s Helen Jerome Broadway production of P&P and the filming of P&P 1940 (girlfriend tried to score a shooting script)! Be warned, a Janeite can spend hours and hours just clicking away here. The notebooks are a small part of Mrs. Burke’s lifetime collection of Austeniana, which includes first editions, letters, and other items, all of which were donated to Goucher, her alma mater, upon her death in 1975. Mrs. Burke’s husband, Henry Burke, was one of the founders of JASNA.

Bath Tourism is offering a free mp3 audio walking tour and map of Jane Austen’s Bath on their Web site. According to the press release:

The main highlights of the tour include the Pump Room - the social heart of the city during Austen’s time where people registered on arrival in the city and took the water; the Assembly Rooms - where people would gather to play cards, dance and take tea; the Royal Crescent - the most impressive address, where people enjoyed promenading and generally being seen; Queen Square - where Austen stayed for a period; Gravel Walk - the location of a touching love scene in the novel ‘Persuasion’; and the Jane Austen Centre - the ‘must see’ exhibition celebrating the life and works of the great novelist.

You will have to fill out a page of information to enable the download. The audio tour can be played on any mp3 player; download it before you leave home and you’re all set to experience Jane Austen’s Bath.

(Go ahead, say it. You know you want to. “Party on, Garth!”)

The Dolphin Hotel in Southampton is for sale. The article says that Jane Austen celebrated her 18th birthday there; we are not sure that is true, but according to Irene Collins’ excellent book Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter, Jane spent the end of 1793, when she would have turned 18, in Southampton and danced at a ball at the Dolphin.

Alert Janeite Allison sent us news of a tour of London and South England in October with emphasis on places of interest to writers and enthusiasts of the Regency era. Tour stops will include several days in London (including the Maritime Museum, the Fan Museum and the beautiful buildings in Greenwich–not to be missed, says the Editrix), Brighton, Portsmouth, Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Cornwall, and Devon, with stops in several notable great houses of the period. The price of the tour is $2,690. The company offering the tour is Peak Travel; the tour is not on their Web site but contact Tessie at Peak Travel (dot com) for details.