Abstract
WKU Libraries opened the fourteenth season of its Kentucky Live! Southern Culture at Its Best talk seasons at Barnes & Noble in Bowling Green, KY on the evening of September 8, 2016. Presenting to the audience of WKU and the Bowling Green communities was one of the world’s leading tea experts Bruce Richardson. He is a writer, photographer, tea blender and frequent speaker at tea events around the country. The theme of his talk was “The Tea Things of Jane Austen.”
Bruce has been a contributing source for articles found in Slate magazine, MTV, CNN, The Smithsonian, National Geographic, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the BBC. In 2011 he was named Tea Master for the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum whose mission is to help define tea’s role in that famous 1773 historical event.
One of his most popular books is The Great Tea Rooms of Britain published by Benjamin Press which is now in its fifth edition. In it he takes you on a romantic journey to twenty-two of his favorite locations for afternoon tea in England, Scotland and Wales It’s filled with beautiful photographs by John Gentry and comes complete with travel suggestions and recipes.
With Jane Pettigrew he has created a major reference source The New Tea Companion: A Guide to Teas Throughout the World, the third edition of which was also published by Benjamin Press in 2015. It’s used by tea professionals around the world and describes teas by country of origin along with tasting notes, steeping times and temperatures.
As befits a Kentucky based company, the Elmwood Inn Fine Teas company offers a “Kentucky blend tea” and a “Bourbon black tea.”
Disciplines
Agricultural Science | American Popular Culture | Cultural History | Economic History | Family, Life Course, and Society | International Economics | Leisure Studies | Literature in English, British Isles
Recommended Citation
Richardson, Bruce, "The Tea Things of Jane Austen" (2016). Library Speaker Series & Special Events. Paper 159.
https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ul_events/159