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Ep75: The Thing About Sir Walter's Looking-Glasses

9/15/2023

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest baronet of all? Sir Walter is busy gazing at his own image, so we're here to chat 18th-century mirrors. Join us this episode as we reflect upon the significance of Sir Walter's many looking-glasses and have ourselves a glasswork gabfest.

Selected Sources

Auerbach, Nina. “O Brave New World: Evolution and Revolution in Persuasion.” ELH39, no. 1 (1972): 112–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/2872293.
Brodey, Inger Sigrun. “Persuasion and Persuadability: When Vanity Is a Virtue.” Persuasions 15 (1993): 235–44.
Hadsund, Per. “The Tin-Mercury Mirror: Its Manufacturing Technique and Deterioration Processes.” Studies in Conservation38, no. 1 (1993): 3–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/1506387.
Kaplan, Laurie. “Sir Walter Elliot’s Looking-Glass, Mary Musgrove’s Sofa, and Anne Elliot’s Chair: Exteriority/Interiority, Intimacy/Society.” Persuasions On-Line25, no. 1 (2004). https://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol25no1/kaplan.html.
Maxwell, Christopher. “People in Glass Houses: The Polished and Polite in Georgian Britain.” In In Sparkling Company: Reflections on Glass in the 18th-Century British World, 39–68. Corning, NY: The Corning Museum of Glass, 2020.

Ep74: The Thing About Marianne's Washing

9/7/2023

Miss Steele has questions about Marianne's washing, and we are here to answer them. This episode we air some dirty laundry and get into the sudsy specifics of how Jane Austen and her contemporaries went about obtaining clean clothes in an era before washers and dryers.

Selected Sources

Austen, Jane. “Autograph Memorandum of Personal Accounts, [1807 Dec.],” December 1807. The Morgan Library and Museum. https://www.themorgan.org/literary-historical/81561.
Blank, Antje. “Dress.” In Jane Austen in Context, edited by Janet Todd, 234–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316036525.020.
Collier, Mary. “From The Woman’s Labor. An Epistle to Mr Stephen Duck.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52290/the-womans-labor-an-epistle-to-mr-stephen-duck.
Davidson, Hilary. Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.
Dyer, Jenny. “Georgian Washerwomen: Tales of the Tub from the Long Eighteenth Century.” Continuity and Change 36, no. 1 (May 2021): 89–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0268416021000072.
Styles, John. The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

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Ep75: The Thing About Sir Walter's Looking-Glasses

Ep74: The Thing About Marianne's Washing

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