November 07, 2017
Jane Austen News - Issue 92
What's the Jane Austen News this week?

I can see why people sometimes say, “Oh, not another period drama”, but that’s only because some period dramas aren’t done very well, or they’re done in a boring way. This one is eternally relevant. The social mores might have changed, but people’s behaviour hasn’t. It has money and class, the battle of the sexes, society and sex and family. Human behaviour is the same whether you’re wearing a frock coat or a hoodie. These issues endure.Well said! We're certainly looking forward to seeing it when it airs this Sunday (12th November) at 9pm on BBC One, and we're sure that a few other Jane Austen fans like us will be too!


7. The first recorded use of the word “sponge cake” was by Jane Austen. Andrew: It was in a letter to her sister. I’m not sure we have her response, but it was presumably complete bafflement.A couple of the other facts we enjoyed learning about were: that the world's leading fortune-cookie writer has retired after 30 years - because of writer's block, and, a scientist called Neil Gemmell is going to look for the Loch Ness Monster's dandruff. As fun as these are, we'd rather stick with Jane and have sponge cake than fortune cookies or monster dandruff! (She knew where her priorities lay.) If you'd like to bake your own Regency version of pound cake (which is the sponge cake Jane was referring to) you can find our recipe here. If you'd like to read the full QI Elves article, that can be found here.

She represents attunement and cooperation over aggression and competition. The replacement is particularly apt since our current strategies for survival aren’t working particularly well. How soon we forget the lessons of history. Extensive wars and assaults on the environment suggest that we are quickly going to hell in a handbag as a species. A kinder, gentler strategy might well purchase our salvation in a literal as well as a moral sense.
Libraries across the country have been holding special Jane Austen events this year to mark the Austen bicentenary. One

A Street Close Named Jane Austen
A new housing development at Prince Philip Barracks in Whitehill in East Hampshire has been trying to come up with
some appropriate names for the new streets it is creating.
In the mix are suggestions such as:

- Blackburne Close (after Sir Kenneth William Blackburne, the first governor-general of Jamaica, born in Bordon in 1907)
- Tony Rolt Drive (after Major Anthony Peter Roylance “Tony” Rolt, a war hero and British racing driver, born in Bordon in 1918)
- Newton Close (after Edward Newton, the English cricketer who played for Hampshire in 1900)

Posted in: Darwin, EM Forster, Howard's End, jane austen close, Jane Austen Fans, murder mystery, pound cake, QI, sponge cake
2 comments
As well as sponge cake, Jane Austen’s letters also contain the first mention of Bath Buns! (This is according to the Oxford English Dictionary – who ought to know).
Leopard
July 26, 2020
I had always read that Jane Austen was the first to use the term “base ball” in Northanger Abbey but the Oxford English Dictionary has citations going back to 1748, though her use is listed there too.
AdamQ
July 26, 2020