Abbot: The husband, or preferred man of an Abbess.

Acushla: An Irish term of endearment

Albert-chain: A heavily linked watch-chain

Alderman: Half-Crown

Alehouse: Where only malt liquors can be sold.

Area: The below-ground servant’s entrance in the front of many London town-houses. (Not underworld slang)

Area Diving: A method of theft that necessitates sneaking down area steps, and stealing from the lower rooms of houses.

B

Bacca-pipes: Whiskers curled in small, close ringlets.

Banyan days – This phrase is employed by sailors to denote the days when no animal food is served out to them.

Barkers (Barking Irons): Guns. Pistols, esp. Revolvers.

Barney:  A noisy argument; a row

Bang: Drug.  From Bhang (more bang for your buck?)

Barney: a noisy argument; a row

Beak: Magistrate

Beak-hunting: Poultry stealing

Bearer up: Person that robs men who have been decoyed by a woman accomplice.

Beef: (1) (v) Raise hue-and-cry.  (2) (n) Thief. (cr) = Hot Beef! = Stop Thief!

Bend: Waistcoat, vest

Betty: A type of lockpick

Bile-shot:  Ill-tempered

Billet:  A situation of employment

Billy: Handkerchief (often silk)

Bit Faker: Remember six bits?  A coiner.  A counterfeiter of coins.

Blackleg: a scab

Blag: To steal or snatch, usually a theft, often by smash-and-grab

Blob, on the (Blab): Begging by telling hardluck stories.

C

Time to test your favorite Librarian’s insulin levels…not to mention the tensile structure of their arteries.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance – Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! (Paperback)

Co-written by Jane Austen, who has fittingly been dead for quite some time, and a person named Seth Grahame-Smith.  Who knows what they really do in their spare time.

I’ll give you my favorite reviewer’s take on this:

“The literary community should never be too proud to laugh at itself. I own three copies of the original “Pride & Prejudice” plus all the movies, so my husband and I bought this the moment we spotted it on the shelf (and laughed all the way to the register).

Fans need to read this book tongue-in-cheek and prepare to laugh WITH it. If you don’t like zombies or consider yourself a Jane Austen purist, if you admire only the most intricate writing and consider this sort of work irreverent, then you’ll be appalled more than amused. The level of writing IS degenerated from the original but, considering the subject matter, I don’t think “quality” was the forethought of the day. “Brains” is more like it.

On a literary note, the juxtaposition of familiar classic and farcical horror makes for harmless, laugh-out-loud comedy. I applaud this idea and hope the “Quirk Classics” line hammers out more spoofs on stories I love.

The only thing I find annoying is the last line of the blurb: “transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.” I’m perfectly capable of enjoying BOTH, thankyouverymuch. (EA Blevins)”

Best quote EVER:

“few thought it worth the expense to dress the dead in finery when they would only soil it upon crawling out of their graves.”

Rarely can one say that the reading of the book reviews is as entertaining and witty as reading of the book itself.  But see for yourself.  Honest, folks.  Austen hasn’t given me such a horror since I saw the identical twins of Austen’s book hiding out in the anarchist forestlands of Ray Bradbury’s movie version of FAHRENHEIT 451.

Fear not, gentle reader, Jane Austen WROTE A SEQUEL…with a little help from her (ghostwriter??) friend Ben H. Winters:

“Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters is a multiplayered study of love, sisterhood, and giant octopi.  We hope these questions will deepen your appreciation and enjoyment of this towering work of classic sea-monster literature.”

Let me say in passing, if you page to the back of this book and read the Readerer’s Discussion Guide, please do so without eating, drinking, or attempting to hold a conversation.  It is full of poignant thoughts, such as,  “Have you ever been attacked by giant lobsters, figuratively or literally?”

Oh, heavens.

Warning…the author of this site DOES do translating.  Some persnickety parents might not like the factual language, or worse, learn the hard way their kids already know what the word means…

American to British dictionary online…

Going to the conversion link, Calendar Converter I put in

1929, October 20th

And found this:

The 138th day of the French Republican Calendar, in the season of Vend miaire, (Month of the Grape Harvest),  the ninth day of the 3rd week.

On the Wikipedia page this is called orge, or, “Day of Barley.”

So I am OFF TO WRITE A FIC NOW!

“To a small extent, it was their dealing with the coinage of Victorian England that made them a little more real, a little more human, a little more legendary.”

Late Victorian Coinage and how it Applies to Sherlock Holmes

The artists on this site:

Sydney Paget; Frederic D. Steele; R. Gutschmidt; Josef Friedrich; Frank Wiles; H. W. Hyde

Other Artists: F. H. Townsend; A. Twidle; G. Halliday; J. Simpson; H. M. Brock; A. Ball; W. Paget;A. Gilbert; H. K. Elcock

Modern Artists: Lysander; R. Wilcox; Oliver Mundy

English Heritage