Once again I haven't read as much as I've wanted nor as quickly as I've wanted to read it. Bill and I have been consumed with house-related chores, and we spent Mother's Day catching up on HBO's Deadwood episodes.
But, I did come across a very entertaining website via another blog earlier today. At EnglishSpace, I found this. One of our cats is named Jane Austen and I have a bumper sticker that reads "I'd rather be reading Jane Austen," so you can imagine how fond I am of her. I delighted in finding that the site also makes reference to a Gothic novelist, Matthew Lewis (Monk) who's credited with being the last of the rationalist Gothic novelists. Monk was suprisingly hypersexual--I was taken aback by many of its scenes--and graphically violent; it was a tasty little morsel (definitely not for children), but who doesn't enjoy the occasional guilty pleasure? Anyway, the site is fun and has great links to other Jane Austen and Gothic novel sites.
P.S. The quotation that forms the title for this post must be one of the finest first sentences ever, and it happens to be Austen's beginning to Emma.
