Welcome to the last day to enter your name for a chance at one of TWO 10th Anniversary Collector’s Editions of A&E’s Pride and Prejudice. If you haven’t already, check out the contest rules and learn more about the prizes at the A&E store.



In Pride and Prejudice, even more than in in other Austen stories (except maybe for Mansfield Park, of course, where the house is the title!) locations seem to become like characters in the tale. Darcy’s Pemberley=grand, glorious, beautiful, elegant, aristocratic in the best sense of the word, able to add to Darcy’s already great attractions. Lizzy, after all, tells Jane she first started to love him when she saw his “beautiful grounds at Pemberley!” 🙂 Longbourne=comfortable, prosperous enough, maybe a bit shabby in a cozy way. Rosings=huge, imposing, overwhelming, gaudy (though of course Lady Catherine DeB. doesn’t think so! She paid 800 pounds for the window glazing alone!). These houses are representative of the characters who live in them, an extension of their personality, symbols of their place in the world. With such heavy expectations placed on the poor houses, I don’t envy any location scout sent out to find them!

In the book The Making of Pride and Prejudice (chock full of great pics and behind the scenes info) there’s a whole chapter on “Location Hunting,” detailing the searches far and wide for the perfect Pemberleys and Longbournes. It’s all a bit like the hunt for Scarlett O’Hara in 1939!

In the end, Luckington Court stood in for Longbourne, which was the most complicated to find since it required “a drawing room, dining room, library, large hall, staircase, landings, and three bedrooms, as well as extensive gardens” (a prettyish wilderness?).

Pembroke, the grandest house in the story, was actually two places–the exteriors at Lyme Park on the Cheshire/Derbyshire border, the interiors at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire. The Making of Pride and Prejudice states “Some people think Jane Austen was thinking of Chatsworth House as Pemberley, but in fact Chatsworth is referred to in its own right in Pride and Prejudice. (though Chatsworth was used in the 2005 movie)

Rosings was Belton House in Lincolnshire, “a splendid Restoration country house with wonderfully formal gardens to the front.” Mr. Collins’ rectory was found nearby (of course!) at The Old Rectory at Teigh.

Meryton was actually a beautiful village, Lacock, in Wiltshire, which I was lucky enough to visit a couple of years ago (and Diane, too!). It was so much fun to get to wander around finding all the locations from the series–“Oh, look, the assembly rooms! Hey, there’s where they saw Darcy and Bingley riding past when they met Wickham!” Yes, I am a P&P geek and I don’t care who knows it!!!

What would your ideal Regency abode be like? The perfect place to live with your Number One Austen Hottie from Cara’s post, to store your fab Regency wardrobe and all your Austen–and Risky Regency–volumes? (Personally, I’ve always been a sucker for a cozy cottage, with climbing roses over the door and a large fireplace where Matthew and I could curl up together in the evenings…)

Plus a few links (in case you want to plan your own P&P tour!):
Lyme Park
Sudbury Hall
Chatsworth
Belton House
Lacock

This week, Risky Regencies is pleased to be able to give away TWO copies of the just-released 10th Anniversary Limited Edition Pride & Prejudice Collector’s Set, which contains both the DVDs and the illustrated companion book for the A&E/BBC miniseries starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

To enter, all you have to do is comment on at least one of the Riskies’ posts this week. For each day this week (from Monday through Saturday) that you comment on that day’s post, you will earn one chance to win — so if you comment on one post, you have one chance, and if you comment on all six posts, you have six chances, and so on.

The DVD is formatted for Region 1, so only US and Canadian entries are eligible.

Visit us early and often for your chance to win; and then stick around to join the thought-provoking discussions, admire gorgeous pictures of Mr. Darcy et al, and chat about your favorite romance novels, or anything to do with Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, or the English Regency.

To learn more about this edition of Pride & Prejudice, visit the
A&E Store.

Winners will be announced on Sunday!

“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back that is an outrage” –Winston Churchill

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them” –Joseph Brodsky

This past week was Banned Books Week. (For more info, check out the ALA’s official site). I always enjoy this week–not because I think banning books is a good idea (!), but because most of my life has been so white-bread boring that I enjoy feeling a bit subversive just for reading a book. 🙂 In preparing this post, I spent a fascinating hour or so scanning lists of banned books on the Internet. Here are a few from around the Regency period:

Candide, Voltaire–In 1930, US Customs seized a shipment of Harvard-bound copies claiming obscenity. Two Harvard profs mounted a spirited defense of the work, and Customs later admitted a different edition

Fanny Hill, John Cleland–written in 1749, this tale of a prostitute was known for its frank sexual descriptions and its parodies of books like Moll Flanders. It wasn’t cleared from US obscenity charges until 1966.

And speaking of Moll Flanders–Defoe’s novel was banned from the US Mail under the Comstock Law of 1873 (the same law that banned the dissemination of birth control devices and information)

Rousseau’s Confessions–seized by US Customs in 1924 as being “injurious to public morality”

And a few I just got a laugh from:

Ibsen’s A Doll’s House–in 1983 members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called to ban this play because it “propagates feminist views”

These geniuses also tried to ban Diary of Anne Frank (also in 1983) for being “a real downer”

Vasilisa the Beautiful: Russian Fairy Tales was challenged in Mena, Arkansas in 1990 because it contains “violence, voodoo, and cannibalism” (the perfect story, IMO!)

D.T. Suzuki’s Zen Buddhism: Select Writings, challenged in Canton, Michigan in 1987–“this book details the teachings of the religion of Buddhism in such a way that the reader could very likely embrace its teachings and choose this as his religion.” Because, of course, the last thing we need in this world is a bunch of peaceful Buddhists meditating all over the place.

What are some of your favorite “dangerous” books?

The finalists of the New Jersey Romance Writers’ Golden Leaf Contest have been announced, and Riskies Elena Greene and Janet Mullany will be duking it out for the Regency category! Click the title of this post for the full listing. The third finalist, Meredith Bond (Dame Fortune), will be joining them in the Hepplewhite-inspired tub of mud.

The results will be announced at the New Jersey Put Your Heart in a Book Conference, coming up in a couple of weeks!

First of all, I’m sorry for the lack of pretty graphics to go with this post! For the past two weeks, blogger has decided not to like for me to download things (actually, I think it may be my ancient computer!). Next week a computer geek friend is coming over to help me work on it, so hopefully next Saturday we will be good to go again. In the meantime, we will just have to imagine! 🙂

I’ve been researching a new story idea while I wait on various project floating around out there, one in which the heroine is a Russian ballerina in 1890. As usual, I’ve gotten a little sidetracked in my research meanderings, and wasted a great deal of time reading various books and visiting various websites. One book I’m enjoying is Orlando Figes’ Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. It’s a massive volume, and I’ve only read bits of it, but there is a whole section titled “Children of 1812” which details the effects of the conflict with the French on Russian society and culture. Since this fits in with “our” period, I decided to kill two birds with one research stone and talk about this here a bit (then my reading is not in vain, LOL!)

Figes says “As readers of War and Peace will know, the war of 1812 was a vital watershed in the culture of the Russian aristocracy.” French was the language used at court and in the cities; French culture had been emulated since the days of Peter the Great and had become ingrained in the fabric of aristocratic life. Now suddenly the French were the ENEMY! To be “Russian” was suddenly in vogue. The use of French, so long de riguer, was frowned on in St. Petersburg salons (Tolstoy’s novel also captures the spirit of this time, when nobles brought up to think and speak in Frencg suddenly struggled with their native tongue). In the 18th century, French was considered the sphere of “thought and sentiment” and Russian of “daily life” (i.e. men used Russian in dealing with serfs and middle-class businessmen; court and city life were for French). Girls, unlike their brothers, would not have much business with serfs and merchants, and were thus less likely to be taught to write Russian script (though I’m sure they would have spoken it, at least some). By the early 19th century, this was changing. Bilingual was the norm; letters would often switch back and forth, even in the same sentence, and even women could write it (Tolstoy’s mother Maria, for example, even wrote poems in Russian).

Native Russian foods and crafts also came into style. For example, Count Alexander Osterman-Tolstoy (a military hero of 1812) had a great mansion in St. Petersburg, with the reception rooms decorated with marble and mirrors, and a bedroom lined with rough wooden logs to look like a peasant hut. Dances like the pliaska were added to the round of waltzes and minuets. Princess Elena Golitsyn said “Nobody had taught me how to dance the pliaska. It was simply that I was a Russian girl.” (Amanda’s note–well, my family is Irish, and I doubt I could suddenly just jump up and do a jig. I’m just saying).

Country houses, or dachas, were now a must-have. They were constructed in a simple Russian style, two stories, made of wood, surrounded by a mezzanine veranda, with ornate window and doorframe carvings in Russian motifs. There the city-escapees picked mushrooms in the woods, made jam, drank tea from samovars, fished, hunted, visited the bathhouse, etc. Back in town, ladies started appearing at balls and receptions in native dress–the sarafan tunic and kokoshnik head-dress, for example. Peasant shawls were the new trend, replacing Indian imports. They were made in bustling serf workshops. The “natural look”–cotton gowns, simple hairstyles, pale complexions, and lighter perfumes were in (Tatiana in Pushkin’s famous poem Eugene Onegin personified this new natural woman).

Pushkin also used Russian songs and tales in hsi work, and he was a serious student of folk traditions–Ruslan and Ludmila, Tsar Saltan, The Golden Cockerel all derived from folktales. By Pushkin’s death in 1837, the literary and musical use of folk tales and motifs was common. The Collection of Russian Folk Tales (1790) was an instant hit. Beethoven used two songs from the collection in his “Razumovsky” quartets (1805), including the “Slava (Glory)” chorus, later used by Mussorgsky in the coronation scene of Boris Godunov. It was originally a sviatochnaya, a folk song used by Russian girls in divination games at New Year’s. This simple tune became a national chorus in 1812.

I admit to being something of a Russophile, so I hope I haven’t bored you with all this info! Hopefully it was kind of interesting to glimpse a culture of the Regency period so far from England. And I’m going to have to echo Megan’s question here, because I need to find out–would you find a Russian heroine interesting??? What about paranormal elements that derive from Russian folktales? What are some other cultures you would like to see more of in novels?