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Say It Like Miss Austen: A Jane Austen Phrase Thesaurus

Author: Stefan Scheuermann

ISBN: 978-1-62137-772-6 (Softcover)

264 Pages

This book is a guide to speaking and writing like a Jane Austen character. With more than 1,400 of Jane Austen's most elegant and witty phrases, quoted directly from her major novels, unfinished work, short stories, juvenilia, and personal letters, all placed into categories of expressional needs, with translations into the common phrases of today, this phrase thesaurus is a guide to conversing like the heroes, heroines, and villains of Jane Austen's sublime body of work. This book also serves as a study into the evolution of English expression, from the late 18th century to today. Jane Austen's letters to her sister, Cassandra, were the equivalent of today's phone calls, e-mails, and texts, giving us voyeuristic insight into normal, daily expressions Jane Austen never intended to be published. For the words that have fallen out of use, this book contains a glossary of original definitions, written with Austen-esque wit and sarcasm. An ocean of the loveliest phrases from one of English Literature's most celebrated writers, whose increasing acclaim has brought her elegant phrases into popular culture, is captured in this book.



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C
Charles "Chuckie"
Like Ahab's Doubloon...

In a time where prepositions have become objects of sentences and the ‘F’-word has acquired the ability to incorporate itself into any part of speech in a sentence, a German author comes along with an ambitious attempt to restore the English language to the beauty it possessed in the Romantic era by reviving lines penned by Jane Austen.

Say It Like Miss Austen is a wonderful literary accoutrement. I wish I would have had access to such a tool when I was an uninterested Criminal Justice student taking an Austen elective in hope of finding a woman. The layout of the book would have done me many favors thanks to the citations following every quote. Even now though, it is refreshing, fun, and humorous to carry this book around the office, referencing and incorporating the eloquent language into everyday conversation with coworkers. It’s fun to watch a lady’s eyes brighten and twinkle when I tell her “she possesses an uncommon union of symmetry, brilliancy, and grace” (pg 4).

I must admit, after thumbing through this book for the last week “I have courted prepossession and ignorance” with regard to Miss Austen in my past (pg 37).

Charles “Chuckie” —Michigan.

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