Not been an easy time in London and complicated by family health issues both near and far, but — while Austen still exists — let's try to keep looking on the bright side of life! And try to escape into a different time, a different world!

It's only a little thing, a new book release, but Austen herself was brilliant at finding joy in little things. In the letters, she is always finding interest and comfort in the smallest things of life, finding consolation for her near-constant frustrations with the publishing business in nature, family, friendships (and even in fashion!) Here are a couple of my favs:

'Next week I shall begin my operations on my hat, on which you know my principal hopes of happiness depend.

The performers gave great satisfaction by doing what they were paid for: and giving themselves no airs...

But you seem to be under a misapprehension as to Mr. Haden. You call him an apothecary. He is no apothecary; he has never been an apothecary...He is a Mr Haden, nothing but a Haden, a sort of wonderful nondescript creature on two legs, but without the least spice of an apothecary. He is, perhaps, the only person not an apothecary hereabouts.'

The small things of life, especially in autumn, can be therapeutic, as fresh gusts of ideas blow the summer daze away and the shifting, crisping leaves descend again. ('It is not everyone,' as Elinor remarks, rather crustily for so young a lady, to her sister Marianne, 'who has your passion for dead leaves.') My own late, great father, who every October struggled with clearing their leaves, as they lived in a couple of acres of woodland — deer included — used to send me a single dead leaf in an envelope, every autumn, to remind me of what I was no longer helping with...

So, here's to autumn, dead leaves, and new books!!!

Yours in friendship,

Alice

This book has been on my wish-list ever since I heard about it, and was only delayed by my annual, self-imposed necessity of reading the entire Booker Prize longlist before the prize is awarded. (Still working on it, not looking good, lol.)

However, reading Living with Jane Austen became imperative last week, when I learned — whoever said that Facebook is useless? — that Janet Todd, in person, was to lecture at the Chelsea Royal Hospital yesterday, as part of the Chelsea History Festival. Five minutes after learning this, I had bought a ticket, oiled out of my usual Friday morning tennis and was reading this book on my Kindle.

Reasons for recommending: (1) I adore Austen (So do you, or you wouldn't be reading this.) (2) Todd writes beautifully and — at least in this book — very lightly. It reads like Austen's letters to Cassandra. She draws the reader to her like a friend in a coffee shop. (3) Todd is fearless. Parts of this book will annoy people, which is always useful, as it stirs the blood. Remember, Austen was fearless, too.

Her perception of Pride and Prejudice as a fantasy will annoy many (though Austen herself hints at this, in her letters). To Todd, 'Pemberley seems to me to exist without irony.' And this while she makes a persuasive case for there being a Heathcliffian/Mr Rochesterian shadow. (Here, Todd endearingly inquires, 'Are you with me?' — just as a friend might, in a Cambridge coffee shop...)

Here's something else I loved: 'Austen's oeuvre is a kind of fugue. After creating one type of heroine, she investigates not quite an opposite but an alternative; then back she swerves to repeat subtly what's been done in the novel-but-one before, to reprise that quietly thoughtful or that witty, sprightly young person... Anne Elliot, Elinor Dashwood and Fanny Price are
aware of the constant compromise necessary between self and society which, at the outset, Elizabeth and Emma have yet to learn.' I loved the lecture — Todd's dry and elegant wit — and today I am the mega-proud owner of a signed copy of her very elegant book, with a characterful Austen. And so, Facebook IS good for something. Who knew?