The Authorized Version

Photo: Basingstoke Gazette, Ophelia King

With world-wide attention, and sometimes controversy, focused on the importance of vaccinations these days, and with a new appreciation of their marvels as we see statistics of the Coronavirus pandemic falling dramatically in countries well supplied with serum, one gains a new perspective on the importance of medical science to our world.

What must it have been like before any sort of inoculation against disease was discovered? That thought...

In my recent video “Jane Austen: From Paradise to Portsmouth” Jane takes viewers to the royal Garrison Church in Portsmouth and recounts the central role their faith played in the lives of her two naval brothers.

 Francis, who rose to be Admiral of the Fleet, was known as “the officer who knelt in church,” an uncommon devotion in those days of rather careless religious practice.

 And up to the day of his death there...

I’ll admit it. In preparing my video Jane Austen from Paradise to Portsmouth I did worry about my American accent. Would it be acceptable to English viewers? To American viewers, for that matter? Should I attempt to speak in cut glass “received” English? An endeavor at which I knew I would fail.

But then, what would Jane have sounded like, living in rural Hampshire 200+ years ago?

I consulted one of my favorite authorities Bill Bryson. In his book The Mother Tongue, he reported that:

Dr. David Ramsay, one of the first American historians, noted in 1791 that Americans had a particular purity of speech, the result of people from all over Britain being thrown together in America where they “dropped the peculiarities of their several provincial...

Well, okay, I’ll be appearing in the persona of my favorite author. But surely, this will be a nostalgic return for Jane. Austen lived in nearby Southampton between 1806 and 1809. Austen set a major scene in her novel Mansfield Park in what is now Old Portsmouth. Her brothers Francis and Charles attended the royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth, and Francis, who rose to be Admiral of the Fleet, made his home in Portsmouth.

For my March 1 presentation at the Portsmouth Bookfest Jane will conduct us on walking tours of both Portsmouth...

 As my regular readers will know, rather to my own surprise—and ultimate delight—for Thanksgiving I followed the turkey cooking recipe given in the new “Regency Recipes” column in the Jane Austen’s Regency World Magazine—even to the extent of larding the bird without aid of a larding needle. (Read it here.)

As I said in that article,...

I had decided. This Thanksgiving I would take it easy. We all know what a difficult year it has been, and only family members who live closest to us would be able to come for dinner. Definitely a good time to let the deli roast my turkey for me. 

Until I told my daughter-in-law, AKA the Grocery...