As summer weeks go, the week ahead is looking pretty good for Jane Austen fans:
* Tomorrow and Saturday, the Janeites of Port Alberni, in British Columbia, will gather for a Jane Austen festival that will include, along with Austen readings and a ball, the now-obligatory effort to break the Guinness World Record for Largest Gathering of People Dressed in Regency Costumes. "People that have not dragged their sewing machine out for ten or fifteen years are doing so," one organizer told a journalist.
The record is currently held by the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, which set the original mark (409) in 2009, saw the title briefly snatched away in July 2014 by the Jane Austen Festival in Louisville, Kentucky, and then regained it two months later by assembling a duly attired crowd of 550. (Although it’s not clear whether Guinness ever recognized the 2014 results for either Bath or Louisville: The Guinness website still lists the original record.)
* A red-eye flight from Vancouver might get you out of Port Alberni in time to catch Sunday’s Picnic Day at the most beloved of Austen sites, Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton. An early-music group called Madding Crowd – wrong author, but still – will perform. And when else will you get to picnic in Jane Austen’s garden?
* Don’t pack away that gown you wore in Port Alberni just yet, because the Louisville Jane Austen Festival starts next Friday and runs all weekend. By all accounts, it’s lots of fun – and, as I noted in a blog last month, the scones are likely to be delicious.
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