Re: PPB: Love-in-Idleness / Jane G. Austin

Will Dockery <[email protected]> posted:

> 
> [email protected] (George J. Dance) posted:
> > MummyChunk wrote:
> >> George J. Dance wrote:
> >
>  >> Saturday's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog
> > >> Love-in-Idleness, by Jane G. Austin
> > >> 
> > >> A time for everything? O yes,
> > >> And August is the time, I guess,
> > >> To gather Love-in-idleness.
> > >> Am I not right? Fair one, confess!
> > >> [...]
> > >> 
> > >> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2026/08/love-in-idleness-jane-g-austin.html
> > >
> > > Thanks George!
> > 
> > Thank you for reading and commenting. Austin made her reputation as a novelist, but
> > she was a pretty good poet, too. Sadly, all I've seen of her published poetry have been
> > the 8 poems I've blogged. (She published one more in September, but I haven't found
> > a copy yet.) There's a website devoted to her, https://janegaustin.com/ -- but it doesn't
> > even mention her poetry that I can see. I'm glad to see she's picked up some 21st-
> > century fans, and I hope there will be more to come. 
> 
> I suppose it should be noted that this is Jane G. Austin, a different [poet] from another famous poet also named Jane Aust[e]n. 
> 
I think she was worried with being confused with novelist and sometime poet Jane
Austen (with an E), and that's why she used either her maiden name (Goodwin) or its 
initial when signing her writing. 

It's easy enough to confuse the two; both were extremely popular novelists who also 
wrote poetry but didn't publish much of it. Austen wrote mainly verses to entertain her friends; 
I hope to get one or two on the blog one of these days. Austin did publish poems in 
print magazines, but they were never collected. Too bad, since what I've found shows
her to be a skilled, versatile poet.