Emmaline is sugar and spice and all things nice. The Mother-Tongue Remix

Less an update but more of a translation to Emmaline is sugar and spice and all things nice, according to her wish:

Jane Austen is not, as one might consider so prematurely, some kind of fourth Brontë sister (fair enough, they were 5 plus 1 brother; however the writing – and publishing – siblings are confined to Charlotte, Emily [Jane], and Anne). In fact, Ms. Austen died one year after the first Brontëss’ birth.

So la Austen was not a Victorian plague either. At the worst, she antedated it, which is inherently what you might call a piece of merit. You can like or dislike the world she created, eventually it is a self-contained one, not less mythological and quotable than your Ancient-Classical Greek world of gods and heroes or The Lord of the Rings, the mother of all Fantasy. The matters that she used to satirize in her early works were known to Herman Melville, as an antipole to his own approach to writing. This could only take him to warn of reading his Moby-Dick in case you appreciated suchlike literature:

Don’t you buy it – don’t you read it, when it does come out, because it is by no means the sort of book for you.

Regarded like that, it is a bereavement to all involved that Herman Melville was not given to meet Jane Austen, who did her job better though including the full deal of the incriminated laced-handkerchief elements.

Investigations on suspecting Emmaline Austere being the seventh Brontë sibling are not yet entirely closed. Obviously, she stood in her booming, blooming mid-twenties by 1888, and thus could be a late achievement by Reverend Patrick Brontë, Haworth country parson. Austere’s publishing mode proves by far less privileged than her elder sisters’, who still haunt the internet – in compensation on her still spankingly conserved website, she keeps records of her kinfolk passed and passing away, with great talent and a British-foggy-dull-grim sense of humour, as if she was Sarah Photogirl in person.

Angelica Evangeline Bartholomew’s Book of Ugly (her first children’s book, virtually David Copperfield from a 13-year-old girl’s point of view, who menaces London East End at gunpoint through the medium of her camera), Angelica Evangeline Bartholomew and the Diary of Dreadful Deeds, Angelica Evangeline Bartholomew and Grandma’s Treasure Map, Ferdinands Family, and Roadkill, all of her making, will be soon available on the international book market, and if this ever happens, be sure to read all the freaking flashing news on Moby-Dick 2.0.

Should Ms. Austere, like Ms. Austen, not be connected to the Brontës, it is due to reasons different from Herman Melville’s. In return, she looks better than all of them. To insist on even more circumstantial details would be presumptuous.

Captures: Sarah Photogirl; licence: Creative Commons.