"Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin bone!"

editrix1031:

Some of you may want to sit down for this. This simple gold ring, set with a cabochon-cut blue stone that Sotheby’s believes to be odontalite (a 19th-century substitute for turquoise) comes with a note. Dated November 1869, it says: “My dear Caroline. The enclosed Ring once belonged to your Aunt Jane. It was given to me by your Aunt Cassandra as soon as she knew that I was engaged to your Uncle. I bequeath it to you. God bless you!” The note is signed by Eleanor Austen.

Yep, this ring belonged to Jane Austen. Simple and unostentatious (is that a word?), the ring is thought to be a good example of Jane’s taste (and budget); the auction catalogue cites a letter she wrote to her sister Cassandra, mentioning a locket that is “neat and plain.” After Jane’s death in 1817, the ring passed to Cassandra, who then gave it to her brother Thomas’s fiancée, Eleanor Jackson. Eleanor, as you read above, then left it to her niece Caroline Austen. Caroline never married, so the ring then passed on to her brother’s daughter Mary, and it continued to move through the family until today. 

The ring will be auctioned at Sotheby’s London next Tuesday (July 10), in their English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations” sale. The estimated price is $31,000 – 47,000.

Note: This auction is KILLING ME. Not only is there the Austen ring, there’s also one of the two silver cigarette cases that Agatha Christie gave to the two musicians who recognized her at the Hydro Hotel in Harrogate, bringing an end to her mysterious 11-day disappearance in 1926. There’s also stacks of original manuscripts by Dorothy Sayers and Graham Greene, an Arthur Rackham ink and watercolor illustration of the Cheshire Cat, a ton of letters written by Benjamin Disraeli and Alan Sillitoe, a beautiful bound and illuminated copy of the Magna Carta, and, and, and, and … Push some more of my buttons, Sotheby’s. Damn.

"For where the mind is perhaps rather unwilling to be convinced, it will always find something to support its doubts."

“Colonel Brandon is an exceptional man isn’t he? What sadness he has known. He kept faithful to his first love even after she had been torn away from him. Even after she was dead. He is the true romantic I think. It is not what we say or feel that makes us what we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do.” 

oliviastclair:

Hi yes, I love Colonel Christopher Brandon. I don’t care if he’s too ‘old’ and fictional. 

I need this quote on my page because YES.

I watched the “Sense and Sensibility” miniseries again today 

and it was so lovely

The thing about Jane Austen is that she / her works always make me happy in the moment I’m enjoying them, but afterwards I always feel sad.  I guess it’s just the impossibility of perfect matches in real life.  I mean, there are no Colonel Brandons floating about, and that is a tragedy.  Because I would marry them all.

Austen critiques the customs that keep women largely powerless, sometimes in her narration, sometimes in the dialogue that she writes for her characters. Lizzie Bennet, the beloved heroine, is a symbol of Austen’s more modern values. Lizzie’s ultimate triumph is a triumph of the new ways over the old ones. 

I’m not quite sure what this is, but I want it to happen.

"I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong."