Literary Treasures

This morning, the Two Nerdy History Girls shared the news that a very special little piece of literary history is coming up for auction on 10 July, and it's such a unique treasure that I couldn't help but pass the word along.

This subdued yet stunning blue odontalite (a popular early-19th-century turquoise substitute) ring with its gold setting (and original box) was once treasured and worn by Jane Austen and bequeathed to her sister Cassandra at her death.  It is tiny - only a size 5 1/2 - and its simplicity, as the auction catalogue observes, is consistent with what we know about Austen's subtle taste in jewelry and fashion.  The ring has been passed down through generations of women in the Austen family for almost two hundred years, kept so close and guarded a secret that its very existence was unknown outside the family until now.  One can't help but feel a bit sad to see it depart from that venerable genealogy after so long, but we can only hope it will continue to be lovingly cared for wherever it travels next.

Ring owned by Jane Austen.

Sotheby's lot 59, 10 July 2012.

Image linked from Sotheby's online catalogue.

Also up for auction that same day (in case you just happen to have some extra funds lying around, of course!) are four additional lots (55, 56, 57, and 58) of first editions of all but one of Austen's novels.  With initial print runs that numbered from only about 1,000 (Sense and Sensibility) to 2,000 (Emma) copies, these are rare, highly-sought after collector's finds, as the $31,000-$47,000 auction estimate for Pride and Prejudice alone attests.  The early publishing history of Austen's works is fascinating; check out this excellent post from The Cataloguer's Desk if you'd like to learn more.

And as if that wasn't enough of an embarrassment of English literary riches, the same catalogue also includes two pencil drawings by Charlotte Bronte.  The first (lot 60), "Derwent Water," is titled, autographed, and dated in the author's own hand.  The other (lot 61) is a portrait of a young lady, inscribed beneath by Patrick Bronte, stating it to be "By my daughter Charlotte."  A 1907 collected edition of the works of the Bronte sisters used this sketch as the frontispiece for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, suggesting it was an image of Anne Bronte, but as the auction catalogue indicates, that attribution is questionable.  What is perhaps most fascinating about this particular piece, though, is the fact that it was drawn on the reverse of another pencil sketch, a corner of which remains to tantalize the imagination.

A pencil sketch by Charlotte Bronte, dated to approximately 1835.

Sotheby's lot 61, 10 July 2012.

Image linked from Sotheby's online catalogue.

The Tasty Treat that is Jane Austen!

Our last English country dance meeting of the year was this past Friday, which also just so happened to be Jane Austen's 236th birthday.  One of our fellow dancers, the prodigiously clever and oh-so-talented Mistress S, who is a devoted enthusiast of everything Austen, brought a special treat to share during our break:

They're chocolate Austen cookies!  We were so impressed!  Mistress S designed and made the cookie cutter herself.  It is taken directly from the famous "L'aimable Jane" silhouette, which appeared in an early copy of Mansfield Park.  The artist of the silhouette cutting is unknown, and it cannot be conclusively proven that it is a depiction of Austen herself, but logic suggests that it probably is.  Isn't it incredible how close the cookies replicate the actual silhouette?  Needless to say, after munching down Austen heads, we all felt immensely more witty for the remainder of the evening.  :-)  Thank you, S, for sharing your splendid treats with us all!

The "L'aimable Jane" silhouette, believed to be of Jane Austen.

Image linked from the National Portrait Gallery.

Finding the Faces of Pride and Prejudice in San Francisco

I'm currently on a two-week trip to CA for a conference and am taking advantage of my time here to visit with some west coast friends I rarely get to see. On Thursday, my friend Kathey and I took a trip into San Francisco to see the SFS perform Music for the Royal Fireworks and both Vivaldi's and Piazzola's Four Seasons, the latter two with Lara St John. It was fantastic, and by far one of the best performances of the Four Seasons I've ever heard, either live or recorded.

But anyway, I digress. Before the concert, we stopped by the Legion of Honor to see the Dutch and Flemish masterworks exhibition currently on display there (quite lovely and worth the trip if you live close enough to go!). After spending some time in there, we explored the rest of the museum and Kathey (who has been to the LOH numerous times before) brought me to what she fondly calls the "Pride and Prejudice" room.  Hung entirely in European (mostly British) portraiture from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this one particular gallery contains within it faces which look curiously familiar.  Bringing me from one portrait to the next, Kathey would say, "And who's this?" and somehow my answer was always consistent with hers.  It was such fun that I thought I'd share our little adventure in character-finding with you.  See if you can't identify which fictional characters from Pride and Prejudice we found so eerily reflected in these well-known portraits of real people from the past!

First we encountered this gentleman:

Sir Duncan Campbell, Bart., by Henry Raeburn (1812).

Image linked from worldvisitguide.com.

Look familiar?  What about this chap, who we discovered peering at us from the opposite side of the doorway?

Alexander Carre of Cavers, by Henry Raeburn (1802).

Image linked from worldvisitguide.com.

Hung directly to his right (rather condescending of him, don't you think?) was this dashing gentleman who I am sure you must know by sight:

Sir William Napier, Bart., by Henry Raeburn (1811-21).

Image linked from worldvisitguide.com.

Imposingly displayed in another corner was this lady, painted in her youth, of course, and oh-so-appropriately by none other than Sir Joshua Reynolds:

Anne, Viscountess Townshend, by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1779-80).

Image linked from worldvisitguide.com.

And opposite her, we espied this fine looking pair (it looks like they've risen quite nicely in the world, doesn't it?):

Mary, Countess of Plymouth, by Thomas Lawrence (1817).

Image linked from worldvisitguide.com.

Other Archer, Earl of Plymouth, by Thomas Lawrence (1817).

Image linked from worldvisitguide.com.

I hereby issue a challenge to you all, dear readers, to put forth your suppositions as to the identities of these fair-faced personages!  A rousing "Huzzah!" to anyone who can identify them all!

Incidentally, Jane Austen herself also enjoyed the pastime of searching out the faces of her fictional characters in the real-life portraits of her contemporaries.  In a letter to her sister Cassandra on 24 May 1813, she wrote:

"Henry and I went to the exhibition in Spring Gardens. It is not thought a good collection, but I was very well pleased, particularly (pray tell Fanny) with a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her.

I went in hopes of seeing one of her sister, but there was no Mrs. Darcy. Perhaps, however, I may find her in the great exhibition, which we shall go to if we have time. I have no chance of her in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds's paintings, which is now showing in Pall Mall, and which we are also to visit.

Mrs. Bingley's is exactly herself -- size, shaped face, features, and sweetness; there never was a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her. I dare say Mrs. D. will be in yellow."
                                                        Jane Austen's Letters, p. 212

The actual portrait Austen singled out as very like "Mrs Bingley" in green ornaments has been identified as "Portrait of Mrs Q (Mrs Harriet Quentin)," by William Blake.  Although our Mrs Bingley isn't sporting green, we felt pretty confident that she was quite fond of pink as well, and that Mr Bingley certainly loved her enough to commission two portraits, at the very least.  :-)

Portrait of Mrs Q, by William Blake (1820).

Linked from arttattler.com.

Jane Austen Still Sells...in the Millions

Today, one of the few surviving manuscripts written in Jane Austen's own hand sold at Sotheby's in London for $1.6 million, tripling its estimate.  The draft is a fragment of a novel called "The Watsons," which Austen began in 1804 and never completed.  Today's sale included the 68 pages that form the latter part of the autograph manuscript; during WWI, the first 12 pages were auctioned in a Red Cross benefit and are now owned by the Morgan Library, where they are occasionally put on special display.

A number of journalists and bloggers reporting this news today express wonder at the buyer's desire to spend such a prodigious sum on pages that are now readily available online.  Thanks to Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts, a joint project to digitize and make freely available images of every known Austen autograph manuscript, anyone can fully access - up very close! - the auctioned fragment of "The Watsons," as well the portion owned by the Morgan, alongside other Austen works.  It is a three-year project that, in its finished form, hopes to bring together once again the over 1,000 pages of the Austen "archive" that were dispersed amongst the Austen family in 1845.

A page from the auctioned "Watsons" fragment.

Linked from Jane Austen's Fiction Manuscripts.

But it isn't hard to see the appeal of the physical pages...even $1.6 million worth of it.  In an article about the launch of the Manuscripts website, Professor Kathryn Sutherland outlined an often neglected corner of Austen studies: her compositional and editorial processes.  Sutherland explains that even a cursory glance at Austen's manuscripts reveals how different the author's manuscript prose is from its published version, mostly thanks to her editor, likely William Gifford.  The article goes on to detail:

"Gifford was a classical scholar known for being quite a pedant. He took Austen's English and turned it into something different - an almost Johnsonian, formal style," Prof Sutherland said.

"Austen broke many of the rules for writing 'good' English. Her words were jumbled together and there was a level of eccentricity in her spelling - what we would call wrong.

"She has this reputation for clear and elegant English but her writing was actually more interesting than that. She was a more experimental writer than we give her credit for. Her exchanges between characters don't separate out one speaker from another, but that can heighten the drama of a scene.

"It was closer to the style of Virginia Woolf. She was very much ahead of her time."

Part of my time at Oxford involed a bibliography class taught by Professor Sutherland.  Her book on her study of Austen's manuscripts, Jane Austen's Textual Lives, had just been released, so (luckily for me!) many of her examples during the class were drawn directly from that research.  We were priviledged to hear in detail about the discoveries she had made simply by choosing to look at the manuscripts in this way for the very first time.  The book is fascinating and very readable, so if you have an interest in this subject, I highly recommend it.  For those of us who can't afford the $1.6 million to study the manusciprts ourselves, resources like these will just have to be next best thing!


Further Resources:
- Sotheby's catalogue for today's "English Literature, History, Childrens' Books and Illustrations" auction can be viewed here.  The Austen manuscript was Lot 51.
- If you're interested in learning more about the other surviving Austen's manuscripts, be sure to check out the Morgan Library's online counterpart to their recent exhibit, "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy."  The e-exhibit includes a short but very well-done video and access (complete with super-zoom capabilities) to digital images of a number of the pieces in the Morgan's Austen collection - including the first 12 pages of "The Watsons"!