A Jane Austen fan named Eliza
Clung to maidenhood just like a miser.
But she goes to bed nightly
With Darcy or Knightley
And no-one is any the wiser!
quote by by Dawn Ferrett
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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I think every girl is looking for her Mr. Darcy.
quote by Keira Knightley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Lake Eliza
THE SAND was heavy on our feet,
A Christmas sky was o’er us,
And half a mile through dust and heat
Lake ’Liza lay before us.
‘You’ll have a long and heavy tramp’—
So said the last adviser—
‘You can’t do better than to camp
To-night at Lake Eliza.’
We quite forgot our aching shanks,
A cheerful spirit caught us;
We thought of green and shady banks,
We thought of pleasant waters.
’Neath sky as niggard of its rain
As of his gold the miser,
By mulga scrub and lignum plain
We’d tramp’d to Lake Eliza.
A patch to grey discoloured sand,
A fringe of tufty grasses,
A lonely pub in mulga scrub
Is all the stranger passes.
He’d pass the Lake a dozen times
And yet be none the wiser;
I hope that I shall never be
As dry as Lake Eliza.
No patch of green or water seen
To cheer the weary plodder;
The grass is tough as fencing-wire,
And just as good for fodder.
And when I see it mentioned in
Some local ADVERTISER,
’Twill make me laugh, or make me grin—
The name of ‘Lake Eliza.’
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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The Mare's Nest
Jane Austen Beecher Stowe de Rouse
Was good beyond all earthly need;
But, on the other hand, her spouse
Was very, very bad indeed.
He smoked cigars, called churches slow,
And raced -- but this she did not know.
For Belial Machiavelli kept
The little fact a secret, and,
Though o'er his minor sins she wept,
Jane Austen did not understand
That Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay
Absorbed one-half her husband's pay.
She was so good, she made hime worse;
(Some women are like this, I think;)
He taught her parrot how to curse,
Her Assam monkey how to drink.
He vexed her righteous soul until
She went up, and he went down hill.
Then came the crisis, strange to say,
Which turned a good wife to a better.
A telegraphic peon, one day,
Brought her -- now, had it been a letter
For Belial Machiavelli, I
Know Jane would just have let it lie.
But 'twas a telegram instead,
Marked "urgent," and her duty plain
To open it. Jane Austen read:
"Your Lilly's got a cough again.
Can't understand why she is kept
At your expense." Jane Austen wept.
It was a misdirected wire.
Her husband was at Shaitanpore.
She spread her anger, hot as fire,
Through six thin foreign sheets or more.
Sent off that letter, wrote another
To her solicitor -- and mother.
Then Belial Machiavelli saw
Her error and, I trust, his own,
Wired to the minion of the Law,
And traveled wifeward -- not alone.
For Lilly -- thirteen-two and bay --
Came in a horse-box all the way.
There was a scene -- a weep or two --
With many kisses. Austen Jane
Rode Lilly all the season through,
And never opened wires again.
She races now with Belial. This
Is very sad, but so it is.
poem by Rudyard Kipling
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Jane and Eliza
There were two little girls, neither handsome nor plain;
One's name was Eliza, the other's was Jane:
They were both of one height, as I've heard people say,
They were both of one age, I believe, to a day.
'Twas fancied by some, who but slightly had seen them,
That scarcely a difference was there between them;
But no one for long in this notion persisted,
So great a distinction there really existed.
Eliza knew well that she could not be pleasing,
While fretting and fuming, while sulky or teasing;
And therefore in company artfully tried
Not to break her bad habits, but only to hide.
So when she was out, with much labour and pain,
She contrived to look almost a pleasant as Jane;
But then you might see, that in forcing a smile,
Her mouth was uneasy, and ached all the while.
And in spite of her care, it would sometimes befall,
That some cross event happen'd to ruin it all;
And because it might chance that her share was the worst,
Her temper broke loose, and her dimples dispersed.
But Jane, who had nothing she wanted to hide,
And therefore these troublesome arts never tried,
Had none of the care and fatigue of concealing,
But her face always show'd what her bosom was feeling.
At home or abroad there was peace in her smile,
A cheerful good nature that needed no guile.
And Eliza work'd hard, but could never obtain
The affection that freely was given to Jane.
poem by Ann Taylor
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Emotional Upheaval
Only Terry Pratchett can be forgiven for irreverently sending
an unrefined Sam Vines into the pristine company of Pride
and Prejuduce - calling this classic a silly romance
Vimes launches into a diatribe against the stifling gentility that
held rich people enthralled within a useless existence, tells
author Jane Austen to write about
Corpses, murder and war – a cross between Mickey Spillane
and Margaret Mitchell; I love his advice about earning one’s
own keep leading to self-esteem
Enjoy the psychological tension Austen described –without
much action she creates more excitement and emotional
upheaval than Mike Hammer and
Scarlett O’Hara combined – only Wuthering Heights and
Jane Eyre can rival Jane Austen in making me
experience hallucinations!
Snuff – Terry Pratchett; Doubleday 2011
pp 69-72
poem by Margaret Alice Second
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Better, Deeper, More Intelligent
Better, deeper, more intelligent,
and sensitive than us, Jane Austen
provides a literary environment
in which we all, by getting lost in
admiration for her heroines,
feel so diminished we conclude
whichever of the many heroes wins
their heart is an unlucky dude.
Riding with her, dressed by Abercombie
and Fitch is not the sort of way
I’d like to spend my time. I’m not a zombie.
Perhaps because I am not gay
I can’t relate to all the topics Jane
obsesses on, and in Northanger
Abbey heroines would all complain
I was a crashing bore and wanker.
“Why couldn’t all these heroines go out
and get a job? ” was asked by Emma––
not Jane’s, Ms. Thompson’s Emma, without doubt
a heroine who’s not a femi-
nist––oh horrid word––but understands
how prejudice which is their pride
lands nearly all of them in Jane’s badlands
composed of English countryside.
Who needs a woman who is deeper than
themselves, far better, surely, and
far more intelligent? I’m not that man.
Although I think I understand
what all her heroines are saying, I
don’t look for girls who're good or deep.
I’m merely looking for the sort who’ll lie
with me before I fall asleep.
Inspired by an article by Jennifer Schuessler on “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, ” by Seth Grahame-Smith (“I Was a Regency Zombie, ” NYT, February 22,2009) :
The classic examples of that would be any speech by Judi Dench — her accent certainly helps — or Emma Thompson’s understated, wryly funny acceptance speech at the 1996 Oscars, when she won the award for best adapted screenplay for “Sense and Sensibility.”
“Before I came, I went to visit Jane Austen’s grave in Winchester Cathedral to pay my respects, you know, and tell her about the grosses, ” she said. She also thanked Sidney Pollack “for asking the right questions, like, ‘Why couldn’t these women go out and get a job? ’ ” Ms. Thompson — who accepted another award, at the Golden Globes, with a speech in the style of Jane Austen herself — then did what cool British award winners do: she put the Oscar in her guest bathroom.
These days, America is menaced by zombie banks and zombie computers. What’s next, a zombie Jane Austen? In fact, yes. Minor pandemonium ensued in the blogosphere this month after Quirk Books announced the publication of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, ” an edition of Austen’s classic juiced up with “all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem” by a Los Angeles television writer named Seth Grahame-Smith. (First line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”) … In fact, “Pride and Prejudice” may already be a zombie novel, contends Brad Pasanek, a specialist in 18th-century literature at the University of Virginia. “The characters other than the protagonist are so often surrounded by people who aren’t fully human, like machines that keep repeating the same things over and over again, ” Professor Pasanek said. “All those characters shuffling in and out of scenes, always frustrating the protagonists. It’s a crowded but eerie landscape. What’s wrong with those people? They don’t dance well but move in jerky fits. Oh, they are headed this way! ” While the vast industry of Austen sequels and pastiches runs heavily toward the romance-novel end of the literary spectrum - see “The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy” by Maya Slater, to be published in the United States in June - scholars have long emphasized the mean-girl side of Jane’s personality. Professor Pasanek, who has collaborated on a project that uses spam-detection software to analyze Austen fan fiction, cites the psychologist D. W. Harding’s 1940 essay “Regulated Hatred, ” which sounds more like a death-metal band than a piece of influential Austen scholarship.“Most people try to ignore the fact that Austen’s novels are sort of acid baths, ” Professor Pasanek said. “She’s so much better, deeper, more sensitive and intelligent than everyone around her that she has to regulate her own misanthropy. Her novels are hostile environments.”
2/22/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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What is right to be done cannot be done too soon.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Those who do not complain are never pitied.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nobody minds having what is too good for them.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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One man's style must not be the rule of another's.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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One cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nothing ever fatigues me, but doing what I do not like.
Jane Austen in Mansfield Park
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My sore throats are always worse than anyone's.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
quote by Jane Austen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I always deserve the best treatment because I never put up with any other.
Jane Austen in Emma
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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