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Category: Jane Austen

On Holidays, Period Food, and What We Feed Our Characters

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Having finally finished the clean-up from Thanksgiving (the wedding crystal goblets I have to wash by hand tend to decorate the kitchen counter for days), I am now looking ahead to the next holidays, and more meals to be planned in celebration. Special occasions and special food always go together. Do you have a traditional holiday food you make or fondly remember? For Christians, this past Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent, the season leading up to Christmas, and in some parts of England, is also known as “stir-up day” –the day you are supposed to stir-up the batter for your Christmas cake or pudding so it will have enough time to age properly. (The day can also be the last Sunday before the start of Advent.) There’s a double meaning to the name, as one of the old texts used by the church for the start of Advent begins “Stir up , we beseech thee O Lord” and one site claims “this activity of stirring-up the ingredients symbolizes our hearts that must be stirred in preparation for Christ’s birth.” Christmas cakes (aka fruitcakes) have a pedigree as long as the technique of using rum or brandy to preserve food. “Plum Pudding” was also around long before the Victorians popularized it as “Christmas pudding”. Either one could include meat with the dried fruit in their early forms, but one is baked and the other was boiled –steamed in later times.

For someone who’s not a great cook, maybe it’s ironic that I’ve always been interested in period food, but it comes honestly from my interest in the daily life of other times. The Regency isn’t my only pet period –I’m a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism and indulge in medieval interests, too. I collect cookbooks on period food, and recently added Dinner with Tom Jones: Eighteenth Century Cookery Adapted for the Modern Kitchen, by Lorna Sass (1977, the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Sass also wrote To the King’s Taste (Richard II) and To the Queen’s Taste (Elizabeth I).

Cover-Dinner with Tom Jones.jpgI can’t believe I found this treasure in my church yard sale!! I recommend it as a research gold-mine; it has notes about menus, how dishes should be arranged on the table, and all sorts of extra goodies besides the recipes, and while it covers a period slightly earlier than our beloved Regency, back then things did not change as rapidly as they do now. Casting about for what to feed our characters, a ragoo of asparagus or heavens, yes, a chocolate tart(!) might be just the thing we need to serve them. And the book is illustrated with delightful sketches of county life by Thomas Rowlandson (behaving properly for a change).

Cover-Dinner with Mr DarcyOn my Christmas list is another cookbook just released last month which should also be of great interest to us all —Dinner with Mr Darcy by Pen Vogler, a new addition to the existing canon related to food in Jane Austen’s books and life. Besides recipes inspired by Jane’s novels and letters, it also promises notes about table arrangements, kitchens and gardens, changing mealtimes, and servants and service, etc.

Both of these books use Hannah Glasse’s first cookbook, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), as a chief source. A reviewer of Vogler’s book (http://tinyurl.com/mlrxl6j) says this was “one of the first commercial cookbooks to capture the public imagination and was used by middle-class families like the Austens well into the 19th century.” Does food history interest you? Do you care about what our story characters eat? (The book I’m editing now for reissue, The Captain’s Dilemma, has a running joke about the family’s inventive but not very good cook.) What are some of your favorite resources?

I wish you all very happy holidays and some memorable meals with friends and family, whatever you celebrate!

P&P Dinner Scene

Mr Collins (Tom Hollander) distracts Elizabeth Bennett (Keira Knightley) from her meal in the 2005 ‘Pride and Prejudice’ -Photo Credit: Rex Features/Everett Collection

Posted in History, Jane Austen, Regency, Research | Tagged , , , , , , , | 13 Replies

Pam Mingle & Mary Bennet

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Mingle PamelaIn mid-December we’ll talk about Austen here at the Riskies, something of a tradition as we celebrate Jane’s birthday on December 15. But we’re getting a sneak preview today with guest blogger Pam Mingle, whose new release The Pursuit of Mary Bennet riskily takes on Mary, the girl Austen probably didn’t intend us to like at all! I was lucky enough to be sent an advance copy, and it’s a great read.

Here’s Pam:

PursuitMaryBennet pbIn 2013 we have been celebrating the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen’s iconic novel. But it was sheer happenstance that my book, The Pursuit of Mary Bennet, ended up being published the same year. For many years now, Pride & Prejudice has been my go-to book when I seek comfort. When the world looks dark and unforgiving, and I need a better place to be. If that happens, I usually find myself curled up with my battered copy of the novel.

What does it offer that we can’t seem to find anywhere else? Charm, humor, witty dialogue, memorable characters, enduring themes, and at its heart, a love story for the ages. In the end, it’s the romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy that continues to draw me back time and time again. Some have pronounced Pride & Prejudice the first romance novel, one that set the pattern for all those that have followed. In the first half of the book, all the obstacles to a romance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are developed: Mr. Darcy’s arrogance, Elizabeth’s family and lack of connections, her attraction to Mr. Wickham, her hasty and premature judgment of Mr. Darcy’s character. Despite all this, he proposes because the “violence” of his feelings for her trumps everything else. Except for her own feelings. The proposal, and Elizabeth’s rejection of him, is one of the great scenes in literature.

In the second half of the book, the obstacles fall one by one. Elizabeth sees Wickham for what he really is; Mr. Darcy, despite his natural reserve, changes. He goes out of his way to help “poor Lydia” and avert disaster for the Bennet family. Elizabeth is not blind to the change in his character. Austen handles it all so beautifully and skillfully. In the end, their coming together is natural and expected. It’s easy to see why Pride & Prejudice is thought of as the original model for love stories.

I chose Mary Bennet as my main character because she, too, is a person in want of change, and with the potential to do so. She reads, she plays music (although not very well). She thinks seriously about matters, even though her conclusions are often faulty. In The Pursuit of Mary Bennet, Mary wants to change, to re-invent herself. She prepares herself to become more independent. If she finds romance along the way…well, there’s nothing wrong with that! Here’s a brief summary:

For most of her life, Mary, the serious and unpolished middle Bennet sister, has been overshadowed by her sisters—Jane, Elizabeth, Kitty, and Lydia. When a very pregnant Lydia returns to Longbourn and scandalously announces she’s left Wickham, Mary and Kitty are packed off to visit Jane in Derbyshire. It is there that Mary encounters the handsome and eligible Henry Walsh.Unschooled in the game of love, Mary finds his warm attentions confounding. With her heart and her future at risk, Mary must throw caution to the wind and begin a journey of discovery that will teach her surprising lessons about herself and the desires of her heart.

HarperCollins has kindly offered two copies of the book, so please enter and spread the word! If you post a comment, Pam would love to hear what you think of the “new” Mary, and the Riskies want to know what YOU love about Pride & Prejudice.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Posted in Giveaways, Guest, Jane Austen, Reading | 10 Replies

Heroes to fall in love with

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Elizabeth-and-Darcy-pride-and-prejudice-4699146-800-530I think it’s pretty much standard that when you write romance you fall in love with the hero, even if at certain stages of the book you want to give him a smack upside the head and tell him not to be such a stubborn, insensitive, clueless idiot. And we hope that our readers fall in love with him and the heroine, or even the relationship itself. Lizzie and Darcy, anyone?

So here’s my Top Ten, in no particular order, of fictional heroes I have fallen in love with:

Black Beauty. Yes, I know he’s a horse. I was six, okay?

180px-Mr_Tumnus-1-Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe.  Ditto faun, and I was eight. But I fell all over in love with him again in the movie and James McAvoy’s goaty goodness. Talking of which, check out this very sexy dance scene from the very indifferent movie Becoming Jane. Ooh.

Henry Tilney. He is the best Austen hero. He knows about laundry. He has social skills, does not practice pluralism, and is the success story of his dysfunctional family.

Lord Peter Wimsey. Or, to be specific, Lord Peter Wimsey in Gaudy Night, when Harriet falls in love with him, finally, and he is translated into instant hotness. Placetne, magistra?

Sam Vine in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. A cop with smarts, a tender heart, a strong sense of justice, and a love of bacon sandwiches.

Lord Vetinari, also from Discworld. What’s not to love! An autocrat who was trained as an assassin, given to sarcasm and steepling of fingers.

Dorothea Brooke from Middlemarch by George Eliot. So she’s a girl (so was George). You have a problem with that?

Will Ladislaw, also from Middlemarch. All that exotic foreign radical hotness.

Jasper Hedges from Pam Rosenthal’s The Edge of Impropriety. Smart, shabby, beautiful hands, glasses, and actually smacks away the heroine’s hand during their first encounter because he can undo his trouser buttons faster than she can.

Temeraire the dragon from Naomi Novik’s series. Even if he does have eggs with other women I love him still.

And #11, bonus material, Will Lawrence from the same series.

How about you?

Posted in Jane Austen, Reading | 5 Replies

Jane Austen & the Baltimore Book Festival

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Jane-Austen-ring-in-boxFirst, if you haven’t heard, great news–the fundraising effort to keep Jane Austen’s ring where it belongs, at the Jane Austen House Museum, has been successful! I am very excited. As you know, I feel very strongly about national treasures disappearing into private ownership. I had a minor sort of rant about the possible fate of the ring when it first went on the block. (I’m trying really, really hard not to gloat in public. Give me credit for making the effort.)

I was originally planning a post today about a tie-in between my book Hidden Paradise and the movie Austenland. They’re both about Austen-themed resorts, except in my book there’s a load more sex. But I haven’t yet seen the movie and I read this truly awful review of it. However it is the one-year anniversary of my book, so why not buy it. Even better, why not come to the Baltimore Book Festival tomorrow and hear me talk about Austen and buy a signed copy. I’m on a panel at noon with Leslie Carroll and Diana Peterfreund talking about Austen and our Austen knock-offs, and reading excerpts on the Maryland Romance Writers‘ stage. I’ll probably be reading from Jane and the Damned.

I’ll still be around at 7 when I’m joining a gaggle of other authors for a panel called Fifty Shades of Hot, in which we talk about–no, not that book, but our own. Panelists are Damon Suede, Eliza Knight, Stephanie Draven, Kate Poole, and Megan Hart. (Incidentally, the 6 pm panel includes chocolate, so you might want to come early!)

The Baltimore Book Festival continues through the weekend, with food, music, beer, readings, and books. LOTS of books. It’s lots of fun and I hope you can drop by!

Posted in Jane Austen | Tagged | 1 Reply

Pride and Prejudice – A Victorian Soap Opera???

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PrideandPrejudiceCH15

I’m continuing Myretta’s Jane Austen theme today.

The Christian Science Monitor just published an article on the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, coinciding with Bath’s annual Jane Austen Festival. The title of the article is “Victorian-era soap opera turns 200: Pride and Prejudice still resonates today.”

Doesn’t that raise your hackles?

My goodness! First to call the book Victorian-era?

One could argue whether the book was Regency, because it was published in 1813, during the Regency, or whether it was Georgian, since Austen first wrote it in 1797, but it is lightyears from being Victorian in time-period and story! One wonders whether the journalist (or title writer) ever thought to check his research on that matter? Ironically, attached to the article is a a quiz about the United Kingdom (more on that later). I suspect the writers would not score well.

PrideandPrejudiceCH3detailThen to call Pride and Prejudice a soap opera? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The article compares the popularity of Downton Abbey to Pride and Prejudice. Now, I love Downton Abbey, but it is more a soap opera than Pride and Prejudice ever could be. Wikipedia defines a soap opera as:  a serial drama, on television or radio, that features multiple related story lines dealing with the lives of multiple characters. The stories in these series typically focus heavily on emotional relationships to the point of melodrama.

Pride and Prejudice isn’t a series. True, the book has multiple characters with multiple story lines and is heavily focused on emotional relationships, but never never to the point of melodrama! Austen did not write melodrama. She wrote with a keen observation, wisdom, and wit about people, about their strengths and weaknesses, about how they could change and grow-through love.

Bingley&Jane_CH_55What’s more, Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the greatest books in literature. It regularly appears on lists of the greatest books of all time (except on one list I read yesterday and couldn’t find today to provide a link. And this list of 100 Must Read Books for Men- only one woman author there, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird). Consider this quote from Anna Quindlen:

Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel to teach us that that search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery. (from Wikipedia)

Other than that, the article is pretty decent with some good observations from people who have the expertise to speak knowledgeably about the book.

It also includes a fun quiz – How Well Do You Know Pride and Prejudice? I scored only 80% mostly because I didn’t know enough about the film adaptations of the book. And I guessed Lizzie’s age wrong.

The article also links to another quiz – Keep calm and answer on: Take our United Kingdom quiz. I scored 80% on this one, too, mostly because I know Regency history, but not much else!

Take the quizzes and tell us how you do!

Do you think Pride and Prejudice is a soap opera?

Posted in Frivolity, Jane Austen, Reading | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Replies