Editions and Crumpets

It cannot be a coincidence that both the Heavenly Muse and the humble kettle sing. Upon filling our third teapot of the day (Assam, loose leaf, after a morning and lunchtime of splendid English Breakfast Tea), our eye caught the spine of a book upon our shelves that we had bought some months ago, and had placed happily thereupon – and, I am afraid, inexcusably forgotten all about in the intervening time. It is a beautiful book. We took it down, and read; and drank our tea, and read some more; and are still reading, and still drinking; and the muse and the kettle have warmed us together into a delightful, delicious, exquisite passion we feel we cannot stop from sharing.

Dr Johnson was scandalised by Garrick treating books like objects, and of course was right in recommending that people don’t eat their poached eggs off them, or lardle the pages with jam and butter, or try and wash with them, or whatever it was he said. This would be ridiculous. Yet books are of course inescapably objects, for all the ascetics that would have us ignore this, and there is no shame in taking joy in both the outward and inward condition of a tome. We believe that these ascetics have very ugly wives, and by a simple act of logical transposition are merely trying to defend in this realm the idea of being internally nice and outwardly nasty that consoles them in another. They should leave books alone and convince their wives into niqabs, if that is their concern. Outfitters are readily available in Birmingham.

You will have read the book we are recommending you purchase and read with good tea, but not, however, in this form. It is the Complete Novels of Jane Austen. It is published by Penguin. But stop. I can’t believe you just scoffed at me. Lower that eyebrow now, if you please. Ladies and minors are present, and your rolling eyes are scaring them.

It isn’t the repulsive BBC-cover-design omnibus paperback they put out a while back. It is a fresh, brand new, deluxe edition, with thick, milky paper (every page cut raggedly at the edge), classic font, bound in a Faber-style cover (paperback plus hardcover-esque flaps) with strips of Regency wallpaper designs streaking across it, completed with a tasteful little painting of a lady kissing her (um, let's hope) husband. It is heavy in the hand, but not at all rigid: it falls open languidly, like a lady retiring upon a couch: the pages smell of some ancient mill: it was sold in 2006, but might have come from the shelves of Parnassus: it gives to Ms Austen’s pert, perfected style a suitable sensation of louche, delicious afternoons spent reading on a garden bench.

It is available in all good bookshops now. If your local one doesn’t have it , try setting fire to an effigy of them or something.