Showing posts with label Jane Austen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jane Austen. Show all posts

01 June 2026

Women on Postcards | Q Is for Quote

«I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant and spending all my money ant what is worse for you, I HAVE BEEN SPENDING YOURS TOO.»
Jane Austen, Letter from April 18, 1911
Actually, I have a small collection of Jane Austen postcards. Let me use this for Q, because it is a very difficult letter!

[Women on Postcards - 2026]

30 May 2026

Without Having Much to Say

«Every at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least [...] »

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

25 April 2026

Disappointment and Sorrow

«"I never will, no, I certainly never will wish for a letter again," was Fanny's secret declaration as she finished this. "What do they bring but disappointment and sorrow?"»

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

07 April 2026

In a Most Restless State

« [...] by no letters appearing in the course of three or four days more, she was in a most restless, anxious state.»

Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

16 December 2025

250th Anniversary of Jane Austen’s Birth

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth and I have been celebrating throughout the year. Apart from re-reading some Austen's books... getting and sending Austen-related mail, of course!




"Nobody minds having what is too good for them."
Mansfield Park


I guess I can add a Brönte-related postcard: the earliest know image of Haworth Parsonage.

All sent by Laura (the UK).

23 April 2025

Books & Roses Day

23 April is Sant Jordi (='Saint George’s Day'), and also the UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day, when love and literature are celebrated massively throughout the Catalan countries and, more and more, in many other places around the world. The exchange of books and roses (#BooksAndRoses) is turning into a worldwide phenomenon.

I love this day, and I love when snail mail is full of...

Roses

Frist Art Museum
Nashville, Tennessee (USA)




... and Books


The Book Loft
Columbus, Ohio (the USA)


Persuasion, Jane Austen

Emma, Jane Austen

Mail sent by Fabienne (France), Catherine (France), Laura (the UK), Imma (PC) and Phillip (the USA).

21 March 2025

The Public Must Be Served Well

«"The post-office is a wonderful establishment!" said she.-- "The regularity and despatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!"

"It is certainly very well regulated."

"So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is even carried wrong--and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder."

"The clerks grow expert from habit.--They must begin with some quickness of sight and hand, and exercise improves them. If you want any farther explanation," continued he, smiling, "they are paid for it. That is the key to a great deal of capacity. The public pays and must be served well."»

Jane Austen, Emma, II, 16

18 March 2025

No Matter of Indiference

«"Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very positive course."
"You are speaking of letters of business; mine are letters of friendship."»

Jane Austen, Emma, II, 16

15 February 2025

After 14 February

"Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love."
Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
Card sent by Laura (the UK).

17 May 2024

Austen's Letter to Her Sister

How cool is to write a letter on a (big) postcard? Laura (the UK) sent me this one, and I enjoyed the front as well as the back. And also that delightful calligraphy!

This is the text on the edited letter on the postcard (you can read here the complete letter):

No. 13 – Queen's Square – Friday May 17th

My dearest Cassandra,

Well, here we are at Bath; we got here about one o'clock, and have been arrived just long enough to go over the house, fix on our rooms, and be very well pleased with the whole of it and our first view of Bath has been just as gloomy as it was last November twelvemonth. – We stopped in Paragon as we came along, but as it was too wet and dirty for us to get out, and at the bottom of Kingsdown Hill we met a gentleman in a buggy, who on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall – and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his Mother, his Wife, or himself must be dead. – We are exceedingly pleased with the House; the rooms are quite as large as we expected. Mrs. Bromley is a fat woman in mourning, and a little black kitten runs about the staircase. – I have the outward and larger apartment, as I ought to have; which is quite as large as our bedroom at home, and my Mother's is not materially less. – The Beds are both as large as any at Steventon; and I have a very nice chest of Drawers and a closet full of shelves –. I hope it will be a tolerable afternoon; when first we came, all the Umbrellas were up, but now the Pavements are getting very white again. – My Mother does not seem at all the worse for her journey, nor are any of us I hope, tho’ Edw. seemed rather fagged last night, and not very brisk this morning, but I trust the bustle of sending for Tea, Coffee, and Sugar, &c., and going out to taste a cheese himself, will do him good. –

There was a very long list of Arrivals here, in the Newspaper yesterday, so that we need not immediately dread absolute Solitude – and there is a Public Breakfast in Sydney Gardens every morning, so that we shall not be wholly starved. – I like our situation very much – – it is far more cheerful than Paragon, and the prospect from the Drawingroom window, at which I now write, is rather picturesque, as it commands a prospective view of the left side of Brock Street, broken by three Lombardy Poplars in the Garden of the last house in Queen's Parade. –

Jane

A great deal of Love from everybody.

Miss Austen,

Steventon,

Overton,

Hants.

04 October 2022

Sent with Care







Letters sent by Laura (the UK).

30 March 2021

Writers on Postcards

John Donne, c. 1572-1631 / Unknown artist, c. 1595

Jane Austen's Writing Room

 I bet they would have enjoyed a typewriter!


Postcards sent by Laura (the UK), Bryon (the USA) and Fabienne (France).

01 September 2018

How Do You Start a Letter?

Which of all my important things shall I tell you first?
Jane Austen, Letter from April 1, 1816

Postcard sent by Laura (the UK).

06 May 2018

Women on Stamps | Literary Works

Some stamps dedicated to literary works of women...

Northanger Abbey was the first of English novelist Jane Austen's novels to be completed for publication, in 1803. However, it was not published, until after her death in 1817.

This stamp belongs to a 2013 6-set of six that commemorate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. Each stamp is dedicated to one of her six published novels, depicting key scenes in specially commissioned artwork by illustrator Angela Barrett. See here the whole issue.


Mary Anne Evans (1819 – 1880) was another English writer that used the male pen name of George Eliot.

The Mill on the Floss (1860) was the novel chosen to be depicted on this 1980 stamp. It belongs to the 4-stamps set Victorian novelists, that includes also Charlotte Bronte, Emily Brontë and 
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell.


Ellen Ombre is a Dutch writer born in Surinam.


This 2001 Dutch set of stamps bears the title Het land van herkomst: schrijven tussen twee culturen ( 'The country of origin: writing between two cultures'). It combines quotations and pictures of Dutch of different origines.





Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was a well-known American writer and civil rights activist. The stamp was issued in 2015 and much celebrated, even if... the quote on the stamp wasn't hers!

---------------

For the new edition of Sunday Stamps-II A to Z, I have decided to show some of the stamps I have got on letters and postcards, related to one topic: women. This is the post for the letter L.

More women on stamps.

12 October 2017

Map Envelopes



Letters sent by Laura (the UK) and Phillip (the USA). Actually, Phillip made a bunch of them...

12 April 2017

#AtoZChallenge | J is for Jane Austen


Letter from December 11, 1815, Jane Austen. Postcard sent by Laura (the UK). Not the first time that Jane Austen appears in my mailbox...

Which author would you like to receive a postcard of?


10 February 2017

Love in the 19th Century


Postcard sent by Laura (the UK) and arrived yesterday. Just in time for this week's theme in Postcards for the Weekend, i. e., Love.

This is a scene of Pride and Prejudice (1813), by the favourite author Jane Austen (My album here). A rather old-fashioned conception of love, for our contemporary standards...

27 January 2016

A Most Agreeable Postcard


Postcard sent by John (the UK), with Jane Austen words on a letter from January 21, 1801: "Expect a most agreeable letter, for not being overburdened by subject -having nothing at all to say-there shall be no check to my genius from beginning to end."

On the back, more mail words:

"The desire to write a letter, to put down what you don't want anyone else to see but the person you are writing to, but which you do not want to be destroyed, and perhaps hope may be preserved for complete strangers to read, is ineradicable. We want to confess ourselves in writing to a few friends, and we do not always want to feel that no one but those friends will ever read what we have written." (T.S. Eliot, 1933)

15 April 2015

Literary Houses on Postcards

After Dicken's House...

Keats House


Keats House, in Hampstead (North London, the UK), once occupied by the English Romantic poet John Keats. I cannot help showing another postcard from this museum. Is there a better way to finish a love letter?

Ever truly yours, John Keats


Chiswick House


Chiswick House is located in west London (the UK). It was designed by Lord Burlington and completed in 1729. There are a lot of literary details in this house. For instance, this furniture that finished in Chatsworth House, the building that inspired Jane Austen Pemberley's of Pride and Prejudice... As my friend wrote, the whole house is like being inside a novel. 

She also told me that every room has a different colour. I like to have postcards of inside and outside. 

10 April 2015

Excuse Me, Ms Austen, But I Can't Agree

Women are the only correspondents
to be depended on.

Postcard sent by Laura (the UK).