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Audio Walking Tour of Jane Austen’s Bath

August 6, 2007 by Vic

“Are you altogether pleased with Bath?”
“Yes, I like it very well.”
Conversation between Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey


Jane Austen’s Bath, a website created by Bath Tourism Plus, offers an audio walking tour of Bath that you can download from the site. The tour of Bath takes 1 1/2 hours. You can listen to these audio casts in your MP3 player as you walk through Bath, or at home, as I have. Professionally produced, each segment takes 2-7 minutes. A colorful walking guide (see graphic above) is available as well on this fabulous site.

Although this audio guide was meant to serve as a walking tour, I am finding it a pleasure to listen to these podcasts in the comfort of my home, reliving my visit to Bath, and learning interesting details that flesh out my knowledge of Jane Austen’s world.

Before you can download these free files, you are asked to fill out an extremely short form that will take about a minute. You will be asked to do this only once. Also, keep in mind that each audio file must be downloaded separately.

Audio files are divided into the following chapters:

  1. Introduction and Abbey Church Yard
  2. Thermae Bath Spa
  3. Sally Lunn House
  4. The Lower Rooms
  5. The River Avon and Pulteney Bridge
  6. Laura Place and Great Pulteney Street
  7. The Royal Mineral Water Hospital
  8. Beau Nash’s House and the Theatre Royal
  9. Queen Square
  10. Gravel Walk
  11. The Royal Crescent
  12. The Circus
  13. The Assembly Rooms
  14. The Paragon
  15. Milsom Street

I have placed a permanent link to this site in my sidebar under audio and visual media.

Facade of the Pump Room

Posted in Bath | Tagged , |

Jane Austen South Park Character Contest

August 4, 2007 by Vic

I’ve contributed my version of Jane Austen as a South Park Character to Parameter Magazine, which I featured in my post, Undressing Mr. Darcy. Here is the image. I hope they’ll accept it in their portrait gallery. Of course she isn’t a poet, but perhaps they will start an author gallery. My only wish is that I could have placed a pen or book in her hands.Click here to see the portrait gallery on this site and to find the South Park character generator. What a fun way to pass the time!

If you would like to try your hand at creating a Jane Austen hero or heroine character, please go to the South Park character generator and submit your entries to me via my email. The contest will be open for one month. The winner of the contest will receive a copy of Lost in Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure by Emma Campbell Webster. Your entries will be featured on this blog.

So start creating your own Captain Wentworths, Elizabeth Bennets, and Mr. Darcies now! Secondary characters are also welcome. Readers of my blog will be given the opportunity to vote for the winner starting September 1.

UPDATES!

Here are the first three submissions from G. C.! On the left, 1. Anne of Kellynch Hall; in the center 2. Anne Marrying Captain Wentworth, then on the right 3. Emma to the ball.

Another submission. This one is from Becca for Lady Catherine de Bourgh

From Lady Jane of A Lady’s Diversions: Mrs. Elizabeth Bennett Darcy

Posted in Popular culture |

Review of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

August 2, 2007 by Vic


Imagine waking up in someone else’s body in another time period with no clue of how you got there or how you’ll make it back home. That’s the situation author Laurie Viera Rigler has set up in Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. One day our heroine Courtney Stone wakes up as Jane Mansfield, a 30-year-old spinster living in turn of the 19th Century England. The day before she was in Los Angeles nursing her hurt over a breakup with a lout of a boyfriend, and the next thing she knows she is confronted by a strict, harsh-eyed Regency mama who deplores her daughter’s unmarried state.

Laurie Viera Rigler takes us on a fun and frothy romp through the Regency period as our heroine encounters one bewildering situation after another trying to understand what’s happened to her and why. Readers who are expecting a time travel novel with the depth and breadth of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series might be disappointed in this book’s superficial fun. But the fans that adored Jude Devereaux’s Knight in Shining Armor or the time travel movies Somewhere in Time, Kate and Leopold, and Big will definitely have a rollicking good time.

The themes of intrigue, romance, and a fish out of water are fleshed out with the cultural shocks that our heroine experiences as she becomes accustomed to a world of chaperons, lack of running water, a cool and calculating mother, and unhygienic hostelries. What I found most interesting about this time travel book is that as Jane, Courtney looks entirely different. In her regency persona she is taller and prettier, and can embroider with the skill of an experienced seamstress. Although Courtney has all of Jane’s talents and some of her memories, her thoughts and emotions are rooted in the 21st century. This dichotomy places us firmly in the mind of our bewildered heroine, who as Courtney is exceedingly attracted to the suitor her alter ego Jane rejected. It doesn’t hurt that our hero, Charles, is as dapper as Mr. Darcy or Captain Wentworth.

There are a few problems of logic, as all time travel novels share. Jane’s strange behavior and lack of memory are explained away as the result of a fall from a horse. And although Courtney was an avid reader of Jane Austen’s novels, as Jane she has a hard time coming to grips with the lack of baths and ready-to-wear dresses and a tightly circumscribed world that is not as romantic as she had once thought.

As a reader who is interested in the Regency Era, I would also have loved to have read more details about dress, manners, interiors, and architecture. These were spare, but because of this economy of detail, the book moves along quickly. Frankly, I couldn’t put it down at times. I also have a confession to make: This is the first Jane Austen fan book or spin off that I have finished. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is as light and pleasing as a summer sherbet, which, as we all know, is a perfect tonic for a hot summer day.

I give it three out of three regency fans

Posted in Book review | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

Bath Daily Photo

August 2, 2007 by Vic

One of my favorite sites has closed shop for now. James Russiello of the Bath Daily Photo took me down memory lane every time I entered the blog. The good news is that his archived posts will remain on the blogosphere for us to view. The bad news is that he’s moving to Ireland.
I enjoyed James’s frequent trips to my blog and the comments he left. Mostly, I appreciated his talent for showing Bath in a glowing light. James, whose commentary is as informative as his photos, promises to return to this site in a few months to update it. I hope so.

Good luck, my Internet friend. May you find success and happiness in your new position. Meanwhile, here are some of James’ photos of Pulteney Bridge, such as this one taken at night. The one above is taken on the bridge itself, facing the shops. One can imagine Jane Austen walking past this scene and finding it comfortably familiar.

Plan of Pulteney Bridge by Robert Adam, Ison Walter, The Georgian Buildings of Bath 1700 – 1830.

Correction, the previous image sitting earlier on this post was of the Rialto Bridge in Venice. My trigger finger uploaded the wrong image. My apologies.

Posted in Bath | Tagged , , |

Lady Anne’s Review of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

August 1, 2007 by Vic

Lady Anne is the most well read of our Janeites of the James group when reading about all things Austen, including Jane’s fan fiction. She has agreed to read Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and report on her impressions of this novel out in stores tomorrow. Lady Anne is one tough reader to please when it comes to any topic pertaining to the Regency Era. Faint praise from her is fine praise indeed. Here, then, is her review. Mine will arrive in a few short days.

Courtney Stone is a 30-ish single living in LA with a nothing job, a crummy apartment, and lousy taste in men. Like many in her situation, she obsesses over trivialities and takes solace in vodka and the occasional Xanax. But she finds her best relief from the woes of her life in re-reading Jane Austen. Jane Mansfield, a 30-ish single living in Regency England, lives at home with her harsh mother and vague, artistic father. Like many in her situation, she sees only misery and unhappiness before her. In her search for a way out, she consults a fortuneteller, who has apparently done a few terms at Hogwarts School, and who, in the aftermath of a riding accident, slips the very 21st century mind and psyche of Courtney into the body and life of the Regency Jane.

In the fairly predictable incidents that unfold, author Laurie Viera Rigler takes a clear look at the marrying money theme that runs through Austen’s books, as well as the realities of everyday living for the gentried classes and their servants. Courtney/Jane, while chafing against the chaperonage inflicted upon her, a little strict by 1813 for a woman of 30 even by Regency standards, learns to appreciate the fabric of the life she got so much comfort from reading about. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Edgeworth, an eminently respectable suitor, is also charming and handsome, and everything she had looked for in a man, but couldn’t find in 21st Century LA. Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict is a good summer read, and fun for every Jane Austen fan.

Posted in Book review, jane austen | Tagged , |

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