Jane austen bobok4/18/2023 In “Jane Austen at Home,” Worsley is shameless, occasionally ebullient (there are some un-Austenlike exclamation points) and sometimes a little breathless. … When it comes to history, I am shameless.” “It’s my job to lead people to that sort of thing. “I’m an entry-level historian,” Worsley has explained. If you haven’t even a mild interest in mead cakes or the orange-scented scones served at Kensington Palace or the unexpectedly reasonable price of butter and cheese in Bath in 1804 and the kinds of dances the Austens attended, “Jane Austen at Home” may not be for you. She also wrote the introduction for “Tea Fit for a Queen,” which has recipes from various royal palaces, including one for Henry VIII’s mead cake. Her previous books include two charming, engaging novels for children, “Eliza Rose” (a girl at the Tudor court) and “My Name Is Victoria” (as you’d expect) and many that derive from her television shows. Worsley is like Child in her thoroughness her fascination with the process and the product her memorable, energetic style of speaking, which is quite like her writing style - lively and “educated but not too posh,” as one of her producers put it - and in her wild, often contagious, occasionally exhausting enthusiasm for her subject. It may not be possible to spend days reading Jane Austen and reading about Jane Austen without writing phrases like “I would find even more to praise in these pages.” But it’s not a great biography, and if it hadn’t been described as one on the cover, I would find even more to praise in these pages. “Jane Austen at Home” is more than just an account of pokers, fire screens, writing desks, Jane’s round spectacles, handsome carriage sweeps in front of handsome houses, some very good and some very disappointing apple pies, the elm-lined walks of the Steventon rectory and the flimsy doors and uneven stairs of a rented house in Bath. ” - A letter from Mary Russell Mitford to Sir William Elford, April 13, 1815 “And a friend of mine, who visits her now says that … till ‘Pride and Prejudice’ showed us what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire screen. “Where shall I begin? Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first?” - A letter from Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra JANE AUSTEN AT HOME By Lucy Worsley Illustrated.
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