What I Read in February

Lots of Regency era and Jane Austen-inspired books, recipes and music

We are nearing the end of February and of Febregency! I’ve been sharing short updates throughout the month, but today’s upload is my usual long and chatty monthly reading vlog, filled with plenty of bookish Regency fun.

I made considerable progress through my ambitious TBR and will certainly be continuing to read Regency era authors in the future! School for Scandal by Richard Sheridan was one unexpected new favorite, and I was so happy to make a closer acquaintance with Jane Austen’s favorites, William Cowper and Samuel Johnson.

I do admittedly still need to finish a few tomes, one of them being Camilla by Fanny Burney. I’m about halfway through the audiobook, and I can tell you that Lionel is unequivocally the worst. Then again, his thoughtless larks are the cause of most of the action in the novel…😅

I had a similar frustration in The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe. I was annoyed by one of Emily St. Aubert’s decisions early on…but if she’d decided differently, there would have been no story! I first picked up this favorite of Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe back in October and got about a third of the way through, but I felt not much was really happening, and it just wasn’t grabbing me.

I’m so glad I gave it another try because the story really picks up right after I left off. Like Henry Tilney, I couldn’t wait to finish it! I can now completely understand why the characters in Northanger Abbey find the book and the mystery of the black veil so intriguing and absorbing. The clip I filmed about Udolpho was so long that I decided to upload it as its own standalone synopsis/review/ramble instead of including it in the reading vlog!

To go along with my Regency era reads, I made two Regency era recipes this month. I found them both in A Jane Austen Christmas by Maria Grace, quoted from an eighteenth century book by one Hannah Glasse entitled (get ready for this): The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: Which Far Exceeds Any Thing of the Kind Ever Yet Published…To Which Are Added, One Hundred and Fifty New and Useful Receipts. And Also Fifty Receipts for Different Articles of Perfumery. With a Copious Index….”

That’s a cookbook name that’s hard to beat! The original came out in 1747, with the expanded edition following in 1784. I ended up halving the ingredients in both recipes I tried; I suppose Hannah Glasse expected her readers to be cooking for the whole neighborhood, with some left over for the servants. In case you’re interested, here are the recipes (converted to the reduced cup measurements I used) below…

Little Fine Cakes

Mix together…

• 2 sticks of butter “beaten to a cream”

• 1 cup white sugar

• 1 cup flour

• 3 eggs, one white left out

• About a third or half a bag of mini chocolate chips (because chocolate wins out over currants in my kitchen any day)

I baked them in little heart tins at 350 F for 10-15 minutes.

Syllabub

Whip together…

• 1 cup of heavy whipping cream

• 1/2 cup of white wine

• Juice of 1 orange

• Juice of 1 lemon

• Bit of lemon zest

• Sugar to taste (I only used about a teaspoon)

Serve garnished with lemon or orange zest in elegant glasses so that you feel like Emma Woodhouse on a picnic to Box Hill. Having no heifer at hand, I did not try Hannah Glasse’s recipe for “Syllabub Under the Cow.”

If you’re looking for some last minute Febregency reading to go with a Friday snack, I have a couple of suggestions…

Dip into an essay or two from The Idler by Samuel Johnson. You can browse through them here in blog form!

Two poems that I thought were just the right length to take you through a cup of coffee or tea were The Dream by Lord Byron and Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - the latter is very seasonal. ❄️

I really enjoyed “A Poetical Epistle To Lady Austen” by William Cowper - not related to Jane Austen but so lovely. Here was my favorite passage…

For God unfolds, by slow degrees,
The purport of his deep decrees,
Sheds every hour a clearer light
In aid of our defective sight;
And spreads, at length, before the soul
A beautiful and perfect whole,
Which busy man's inventive brain
Toils to anticipate, in vain.
    Say, Anna, had you never grown
The beauties of a rose full blown,
Could you, though luminous your eye,
By looking on the bud descry,
Or guess, with a prophetic power,
The future splendour of the flower?
Just so, the Omnipotent, who turns
The system of a world's concerns,
From mere minutiae can educe
Events of most important use,
And bid a dawning sky display
The blaze of a meridian day.
The works of man tend, one and all,
As needs they must, from great to small;
And vanity absorbs at length
The monuments of human strength.
But who can tell how vast the plan
Which this day's incident began?
Too small, perhaps, the slight occasion
For our dim-sighted observation;
It passed unnoticed, as the bird
That cleaves the yielding air unheard,
And yet may prove, when understood,
A harbinger of endless good.

A nice reminder that even “mere minutiae” and “slight occasions” can be the source of “future splendor” and “endless good.” 😊