“I beleive [sic] I drank too much wine last night,” Jane Austen wrote in a letter to her sister, Cassandra, in November 1800. She went on to say that she danced nine out of a dozen dances that evening and “was merely prevented from dancing the rest by the want of a partner.” This light-hearted missive is one of 51 on display in the exhibit A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

Austen penned some 3,000 letters during her lifetime, only 160 of which still exist. (Her sister destroyed many of them at Austen’s request.) Of those, the Morgan has the most of any institution in the world. In the letters Austen talks about her fascination with people watching and preparations for her family’s move to Bath after her curator father’s retirement. A highlight is a note she penned to her eight-year-old niece in which each word is written backwards.

The exhibit is an intriguing look at Austen’s world — her everyday life,  her novels, and the Recency era. Along with the letters, there are other items from the museum’s collection. Drawings by Isabel Bishop (above) depict scenes from Pride and Prejudice. Social satirist and Austen contemporary James Gillroy’s colorful prints touch on many of the same themes as in her novels, like women’s fashions and social rank. An engraving by William Blake of Portrait of Mrs. Q., a French painter’s rendering of Mrs. Harriet Quentin, piqued Austen’s interest. After seeing it in London, she remarked that it was just as she imagined Jane Bennet, aka Mrs. Bingley, of Pride and Prejudice. “Mrs. Bingley is exactly herself, size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there never was a greater likeness,” declared Austen. (William Blake’s World: “A New Heaven is Begun” is at the Morgan through January 3, 2010).

The exhibit offers fascinating facts about Austen and her novels: in addition to prose she penned poems, 18 of which have survived; two previous titles for Northanger Abbey were Susan (the original name for the story’s heroine) and Catherine; and the price of a first edition of Emma was 1.1s pounds, at the time more than double the average weekly earnings of an agricultural laborer. Fewer than 20 books that belonged to Jane Austen are still around. On view is her copy of the journal The Spectator, which is given a mention in chapter five of Northanger Abbey. 

Connections between Austen and other literary figures are prevalent throughout the exhibit. In one of her letters she reports seeing productions of Shakespeare’s plays Hamlet and Macbeth, and in another reading Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem Marmion. While on a lecture tour to earn money to renovate the Norman tower he purchased in Ireland, William Butler Yeats told a friend in correspondence, “I read all Miss Austen in America with great satisfaction.” A copy of Fanny Burney’s novel Camilla contains in it a list of the subscribers who purchased the book, one of whom is Miss J. Austen, Steventon — the only time Austen’s name appears in print. (Her novels were published anonymously.)

A documentary created for the exhibit features contemporary figures talking about Austen’s literacy legacy. Philosopher Cornel West reveals, “She blew my mind” and notes that her works are “ironic and full of wit.” Writer Colm Toibin would seat Austen next to Freud at a dinner party and “feed them a lot of alcohol.” He adds, ”I would love to see what Austen would make of Freud.” Novelist Siri Hustvedt is captivated by both the spoken and the unspoken dialogue in Austen’s works. “This is as pertinent and relevant today as it was then,” she says. 

A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy runs through March 14, 2010, and the museum is hosting numerous related programs, including film viewings and lectures. A Winter Family Day celebration on December 6th will celebrate the Austen exhibit and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (the original manuscript of Dickens’ holiday tale is on display in Mr. Morgan’s library from November 20 – January 10).

Austen’s letters are the most illuminating aspect of the exhibit, but the most touching is one written by Cassandra after the writer’s death. “I have lost a treasure, such a Sister,” she pens, “such a friend as never can have been surpassed.” –Shannon McKenna Schmidt

[Image courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum]

Do some local literary travel today. It’s National Bookstore Day and a great time to start your holiday shopping, pick up some travel guides for planning future adventures, or stock up on reading selections for yourself. Maybe a copy of Matthew Pearl’s The Last Dickens or Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile, both of which are about classic writers and feature literary landmarks.

One of my favorite bookstores is the Strand in New York City (above, decorated for the holidays last year). There are “18 miles” of books lined on shelves and stacked on tables throughout a warren of rooms on three levels. They were featured in an article in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, “A Tour of Literary Manhattan,” along with Idlewild Books, a travel bookstore where titles (guides as well as fiction and narrative nonfiction) are arranged by destination. 

National Bookstore Day was started this year by Publishers Weekly magazine to encourage people to shop locally. (Scroll down on their information page for a list of participating retailers.) Click here to read about it on Entertainment Weekly’s Shelf Life blog.

And please let us know in the comments sections about some of your favorite bookstores, in town or around the world.

Literary traveler Zachary Petit recommended Novel Destinations as one of five “Great Gifts for Writers” in the November/December issue of Writer’s Digest. Each one was selected by a different staffer.

Novel Destinations is featured as a gift For the Writer on the Road. Zachary, the magazine’s managing editor, described it as “a definitive travel guide for writers that venutres into all the literary corners most guidebooks overlook. Wildly useful for any getaway.” He suggests giving a copy of Novel Destinations in lieu of a plane ticket to Key West to visit the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum. If you can spring for both, it’s worth the trip — for the literary connection and also for the legendary cats who live there and roam the house and gardens. You can meet Emily Dickinson (far right, who has the famous six toes), Archibald MacLeish (at right, lounging in Papa’s bedroom), and 50 or so of their friends.

Thanks, Zachary, for recommending Novel Destinations. We wish you and all the other literary travelers out there many memorable adventures!

[Feline photos courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum]

This year, Christmas in London is taking on a decidedly Dickensian tone as the city gears up for the release of the blockbuster Disney movie, A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey, Colin Firth and Bob Hoskins. Set in London in 1843, Charles Dickens’ classic Christmas tale centers on Ebenezer Scrooge, a loney and bitter old miser visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. Eventually, he opens his heart and discovers the joyous spirit of the season.   

Events across the capital will seek to capture that magical spirit starting Tuesday, when the movie premieres to a worldwide audience from right here in London. The stars will be walking the red carpet in Leicester Square shortly after they preside over London’s city-wide Christmas Carol-themed lights switch-on and celebration, “London’s Christmas Carol”, at 5:00 p.m. at various locations around town. (I’ll be situated on Regent Street and then walking over to Leicester Square to see Andrea Bocelli and the St. Paul’s choir lead London’s attempt to break the world record for the biggest ever Christmas Carol sing-along).

Tickets to the movie premiere at several theatres in Leicester Square are still available at a cost of £50, but you can enjoy the light switch-on festivities for free. –Joni Rendon

Tourism Cares, the philanthropic arm of the tourism industry, has developed a new initiative, “Save our Sites”,  which enables the public to vote for a site they would like to see supported.  Edith Wharton’s estate The Mount was chosen for the shortlist and would very much like to encourage all of their supporters to vote for them; the winning site will receive a grant. The Mount has applied for funds to help with some of the most immediate structural repairs which are a continuing and critical part of the restoration of the property.  All you have to do is visit their website

http://www.tourismcares.org/save-our-sites/polling-options
and cast your vote by clicking on the list on the right of the page. Every vote counts, so please take the time to help them out by voting and asking your like-minded friends to do the same!

The New York Times has reported that at The Homestead (left), part of the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, a section of the ceiling in the parlor collapsed on Sunday. The museum is currently closed and plans to re-open this Saturday, October 31st. If you’re heading there, check the Plan Your Visit page on their website first to confirm.

Emily Dickinson was born at The Homestead on December 10, 1830. She spent all but 15 of her 55 years at the house, where she penned poetry in secret and saved it in hand-bound volumes that were discovered by her sister after her death. Only seven of her 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime.

Dickinson often tended the gardens at The Homestead (attired in her signature white dress, a replica of which is on display), and much of her poetry features floral references. On the museum’s website, a virtual tour of the grounds offers insight into how Dickinson was inspired by the landscape surrounding The Homestead. “Flowers were a favorite metaphor for Emily Dickinson,” viewers are informed. “She used them to represent beauty, love, mystery and the whole cycle of life.”

[Photo courtesy of the Emily Dickinson Museum]

In today’s Hartford Courant, columnist Tom Condon looks ahead to 2010 and a trio of anniversaries related to writer and “world citizen” Mark Twain: the 125th anniversary of the publication of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in February, the 100th anniversary of his death in April, and the 175th anniversary of his birth in November. 

Condon notes that the raconteur wasn’t fond of commemorative occasions and once said, ”What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.” But since Twain isn’t here to object, Condon says, Hartford—the city where the scribe spent 16 years and penned some of his most famous works—”should do this up big.” Events will take place throughout the year, many of them in April for the centennial of Twain’s death, including special exhibits at the Mark Twain House and Museum (above) in Hartford.

Stayed tuned for more information about Mark Twain 2010. We’ll be posting details on events and festivites at Twain sites across the country.

The white-washed seaside coach house in Cornwall, England, which was home to novelist Daphne du Maurier in the 1940s has recently been put on the market for the handsome sum of £1.65 million. Du Maurier, most famous for her haunting novel Rebecca, used the house and its dramatic seaside location as the fictional setting of her novel Frenchman’s Creek.

Nestled in its own sandy cove, the house boasts sea-views from almost every room, as well as an enchanting garden, croquet lawn, former tennis court, and greenhouse. “It is easy to see why Daphne Du Maurier was inspired while staying here,” estate agent Robin Trethowan told the Telegraph.

Though born in London, the author spent much of her life in her beloved Cornwall in and around the seaside village of Fowey.  Each year in May, the town hosts a ten-day festival to celebrate du Maurier’s legacy.

Earlier this month, a statue of Helen Keller was unveiled in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Many of Keller’s descendants attended the celebration, as did lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. The statue “will always remind us that people must be respected for what they can do rather than judged for what they cannot,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The bronze statue represents the state of Alabama (each state is allowed two in the Capitol). It depicts seven-year-old Keller standing at the water pump where “miracle worker” Annie Sullivan changed the child’s life. As Sullivan poured water over one of Keller’s hands, on the other she repeatedly tapped out an alphabetic code that spelled the corresponding five-letter word. By day’s end, Keller had learned 30 words and soon mastered writing and reading in Braille. In 1904, she graduated from Radcliffe College, one year after the publication of her autobiography, The Story of My Life. Keller devoted her life to improving conditions for the blind and the deaf-blind, lecturing in more than 25 countries.

The water pump still stands on the grounds of Ivy Green, the home of Keller’s grandparents in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Also there is the two-room cottage (right) that was transformed into a bridal suite for Keller’s parents and where she was born on June 27, 1880. The plantation’s main dwelling—built in 1820 and the second house in Tuscumbia—contains family furnishings, china, silver, and other items such as a sugar chest, where the rare commodity was kept under lock and key. Personal mementos that belonged to Keller are on display, including her library of Braille books and original Braille typewriter. Situated between the main house and the cottage is the well-pump where Keller, who was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most important people of the 20^th century, first learned to communicate under Sullivan’s inspired tutelage.

Each year on weekends from early June through late July, playwright William Gibson’s dramatization of the young Helen Keller’s life, The Miracle Worker, is staged at Ivy Green. The Helen Keller Festival takes place annually in June with music, art exhibits, historical activities and more at various venues in Tuscumbia.

Keller passed away in 1968, her death front page news in The New York Times. Her ashes rest beside those of Annie Sullivan in another Washington, D.C. landmark: the majestic National Cathedral, where a commemorative plaque is engraved in Braille.

 
Statue Photo: © Flickr/Governor Bob Riley’s Office/Robin Cooper
Cottage Photo: © Helen Keller Birthplace/Ivy Green 

At 53, Rue de Varenne in Paris, a plaque on the outside of the building commemorates a famous figure who once lived there—Edith Wharton, “the first writer of the United States to settle in France out of love of the country and its literature.” The literary locale is one place visited by Elaine Sciolino, Paris correspondent for The New York Times and the author of an article about the novelist that appeared today in the newspaper’s travel section, “Edith Wharton Always Had Paris.”

The fascinating article touches on places Wharton visited in Paris, among them the Hôtel de Crillon. It also illuminates personal details like her extensive charitable works during World War I and her clandestine affair with journalist Morton Fullerton. “Wharton’s relationship with Fullerton worked particularly well when they acted like ordinary tourists,” writes Sciolino. “In just one day, they met at the Louvre, visited the nearby St.-Germain-l’Auxerrois Church, went to the ancient Roman Arènes de Lutèce near the Jardin des Plantes, then walked around the Luxembourg Gardens” (at right).

And with the City of Light used as a backdrop in such works as Madame de Treymes, The Reef, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence, Sciolino reminds readers, “Wharton’s Paris endures in her fiction.”

[Photos: © Steven Rendon]