Engraving from La Belle Assemblée, February 1, 1817
Engraving from La Belle Assemblée, February 1, 1817. Unknown artist [Public domain] via Wikimedia.
The couple in the two lines below are not in the ballroom where the assembled masses are dancing, but rather tucked away in a music room where they can have a private conversation. This story, A Music Room Meeting, is one of six short Austen-inspired stories that comprise the book Teatime Tales, which is one of the books given as a welcome gift to those who join my mailing list. (It is also available for purchase so look for it at your favourite ebook retailer.)
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She moved to stand near him. “Is this why you play instead of dancing?”
He closed his eyes. “How can I dance when others cannot?”
[from A Music Room Meeting, An Oxford Cottage Inspired Short Story]
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Leenie Brown fell in love with Jane Austen's works when she first read Sense and Sensibility followed immediately by Pride and Prejudice in her early teens. As the second of five daughters and an avid reader, she has always loved to see where her imagination takes her and to play with and write about the characters she meets along the way. In 2013, these two loves collided when she stumbled upon the world of Jane Austen Fan Fiction. A year later, in 2014, she began writing her own Austen-inspired stories and began publishing them in 2015. Leenie lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with her two teenage boys and her very own Mr. Brown (a wonderful mix of all the best of Darcy, Bingley and Edmund with healthy dose of the teasing Mr. Tillney and just a dash of the scolding Mr. Knightley).
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4 thoughts on “Engraving from La Belle Assemblée, February 1, 1817”
Well, this post is a little wonky on my screen. Lovely picture. I was trying to decide what dance they were doing… whether it was The Allemande or not. Doesn’t matter. It was a cool drawing. Congratulations on this new venture. I hope it does well for you.
This post is also doing strange things on my computer. I’m not sure what that is all about.
The description on the page where I found this image said:
An 1817 engraving depicting two couples waltzing, and three girls practicing their country-dance steps (apparently). The dancing women are wearing skirts with a somewhat stiffened conical silhouette (produced by wearing several layers of petticoats) which seems to have been on the cutting-edge of the most recent high-fashions in 1817. The woman sitting down in the background is still wearing the more free-flowing and clinging skirts which were typical of the 1797-1817 period.
Well, this post is a little wonky on my screen. Lovely picture. I was trying to decide what dance they were doing… whether it was The Allemande or not. Doesn’t matter. It was a cool drawing. Congratulations on this new venture. I hope it does well for you.
This post is also doing strange things on my computer. I’m not sure what that is all about.
The description on the page where I found this image said:
An 1817 engraving depicting two couples waltzing, and three girls practicing their country-dance steps (apparently). The dancing women are wearing skirts with a somewhat stiffened conical silhouette (produced by wearing several layers of petticoats) which seems to have been on the cutting-edge of the most recent high-fashions in 1817. The woman sitting down in the background is still wearing the more free-flowing and clinging skirts which were typical of the 1797-1817 period.
Is supposed to be Darcy and Elizabeth?
No, it is not Darcy and Elizabeth. 🙂