Paraphernalia 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2018 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author (that would be me) is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Dody Williams at Paraphernalia with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thanks – I love to share and would love to be linked – I just want to be sure everyone knows I thunk it up!
Paraphernalia 
Thank you for such a pleasing combination of elements – visual and verbal – to start a day.
You are a true master of ephemera Dody Jane. Truly lovely.
Cheers, Laurel Ann
What a lovely comment! Thank you!
Hi I have some Jane Austen photos of stuff I collected in Winchester. I would like to e-mail them to you but can’t find an address! Is it possible?
Hi Dorothy Jane,
daddy from JOM.
Came upon this peculiar Science story today that mentioned an unusual homage to Jane Austen, so immediately thought of your Blog and decided I needed to give you this link.
Hope you take it in good humor:)
Oh this is priceless! Thanks for sharing it, Daddy. Oh, those sweet spinster mice! Next, they will discover an enzyme and name it Knightley…
Dear Ms. Jane,
I came upon your blog whilst submitting my own to a particular directory, and it seems you and I kindred souls. Over on my site, we are engaged in a project to get people out of their televisions and back into books and real life.
As of late, I’ve had a deep affection for the works of the Brontes, which you seem to do as well. I’d love to link up with you. If you have any interest, I invite you to drop me a line.
Most respectfully yours,
MF
Well Matt, I would love to link up! I will enjoy reading your blog this weekend. Let’s promote reading! As a matter of fact – I am going to write something this weekend about my reading adventures on my vacation!
All te best –
Hi Dorothy Jane,
daddy from JOM visiting.
In Taipei today was browsing on the internet and goofily came upon a YOUTUBE production, Jane Austen’s Fight Club It’s nutty, but actually pretty well produced.
Anyhow, coming on the heels of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and that “Jane Austen Book Club” movie, it strikes me how Ms Austen and her works still somehow resonate in the Culture unlike any similar British fiction author of the time.
I can’t recall Thackery or Eliot or Fielding or Hardy or the Bronte’s etc having any similar continuing impact. Perhaps Dicken’s but pretty much only Scrooge, and that can be explained as a Seasonal thing. It seems to me that she and Shakespeare (Shakespeare In Love etc) are the only 2 who continue to have themselves and their work dredged for new productions of entertainment in modern Culture. Sort of makes me wonder how long before we get “Jane Austen ToothPaste” or “Dashwood Sister Cupcakes” at our Grocery Stores.
Sorry for this nuttiness, and hope you don’t mind my observation. PS. According to the Youtube production linked above, Emma’s got a mean right:)
I saw this posted on the Republic of Pemberley’s Face Book page last week. I re-posted on my page because it is such a hoot! I completely agree with you about the impact Jane has had. I recently listened to a series of lectures from the Teaching Company (English Lit Survey Course – John Southerland) and while most of the authors received one lecture, he carved out two for Jane. She was extremely consequential. There was a BJA and AJA – before Jane Austen and After Jane Austen. She created the way dialogue is written, she organized her plots more neatly and with less sensationalism and she wrote on a topic, love, that has been the secret to her endurance. It is so simple. There are no complex social or psychological situations in her books, pure escapism. I think she will pop up in movie adaptations over and over, like Dickens plots do. The difference is that Jane is more quickly read than Dickens, I think. I also think Dickens’ situations and characters can be too melodramatic. In spite of Mrs Bennet’s silliness, she is still believable.
Excellent response Dorothy Jane, thank you.
It’s fun to know my uneducated observations have some basis in fact.
You guys on this blog are all miles beyond me on this stuff, but i do greatly admire Jane. I can’t recall if I mentioned Mark Twain in his latest released notes humorously hammering Jane Austen—but the wonderful thing is that he also hammers Shakespeare, so she’s in good company.
FWIW, am in China mainland and for whatever reason, you have been banned from my Laptop’s access in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. I am finally able to get your response to my comment above here in Guangzhou, so though I don’t know how you have managed to offend the Chicom’s and get LaceGirl listed on the banned Imperialist website roster, somehow you have done it, and I hope you can sleep at night knowing you are ‘persona non grata’ in the Middle Kingdom.
This raises a last nutty question. The Brit’s had established their Chinese factories, at least in Guangzhou (Canton) by at least the late 1780’s. That being said, do any Jane Austen mentions of China ever spring to mind from her books that you can recall. If so, please give me a steer in the proper direction. I have (don’t hit me) not read all her works. Thanks again Doty Jane.
daddy from JOM.
I have been thinking hard about your China question, Daddy. I am even going through some of Jane’s books to see if I can find references, but I do not think there are many, if any, references to China. There have been rumblings and mini controversies over Jane’s father’s possible connection to a slave plantation in the West Indies. One of the biographies written about her, by David Nokes, tries very hard to make it into a possible dark, immoral stain on the Austen family soul. I am not an expert, but I think that while her father may have had a small (very small) investment in some sort of plantation, it has been shown to be one which was not worked by slaves. That is not to say that the working conditions were in any way superior, but apparently there is some little nugget there which Jane uses as a plot device in Mansfield Park. Fannie Price’s uncle owns such a place and leaves during a huge chunk of the book taking the older son with him to supervise something going on at the plantation.
As with much of Jane’s fictional world – I think Jane took snippets of real life from her own experience and magnified it and imagined it large for her reading audience. Jane knew tangentially what it was like to live with wealth, she observed her wealthy brother and her wealthier friends, but she herself was strapped financially. And since her father died unable to leave her anything much at all, I think the plantation angle is less than nothing.
As to China, I am trying to find references to “china tea” perhaps she names types of tea in her books, I can’t remember but will have fun searching them out!
Hi Dorothy Jane, Daddy from JOM.
Came across this today at the BBC, and immediately thought of you: Jane Austen’s style might not be hers, academic claims.
So first they told us Shakespeare didn’t really write Shakespeare’s plays, and now they tell us Jane Austen’s style was all done by her Editor, since she supposedly couldn’t spell or punctuate any better than me!
Anyhow I’ve got my tar and pitchfork ready, so just tell me when you want me to show up outside the BBC studios:) Hope things are going great. Cheers.