Chawton House Library

La Belle Assemblee: creating a new type of magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:57:00 +0000

La Belle Assemblée, or in full La Belle Assemblée or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine Addressed Particularly to the Ladies, was a British women's magazine published from 1806 to 1837, founded by John Bell (1745–1831).

La Belle Assemblée was a landmark in the history of magazine production and a testimony to John Bell’s talent in raising the standards of magazine production. Bell believed a periodical needed to appeal visually and the lavishness of La Belle Assemblée marks it as the ancestor of modern glossy magazines. Leigh Hunt, the Romantic critic and poet, described Bell’s innovations in typography as ‘elegant’; the layout and illustrations were equally fine and produced in a format larger than other contemporary magazines, such as the Lady’s Magazine, and much larger than the pocket-sized Ladies’ Monthly Museum.

La Belle Assemblée is now best known for its Georgian fashion plates but until the 1820s it also published original poetry and fiction, non-fiction articles on politics and science, book and theatre reviews, and serialized novels, including Oakwood Hall by Catherine Hutton. Another notable contributor to La Belle Assemblée was Mary Shelley, and works by both of these authors can be found in the collections here at Chawton House Library.

Each number of La Belle Assemblée typically contained five plates—one depicting a member of the court or fashionable society, two depicting the latest fashions, and a further two providing sheet music and a sewing pattern—the magazine was not dominated by the frivolities of fashionable dress. Bell separated the portion of the work dealing with the fashions of the month from the remainder of the publication. Initially the two sections could be purchased separately; the first consisting of the bulk of the letterpress, together with two of the plates, the second ('La Belle Assemblée') consisting of the fashion plates and a sewing pattern, together, usually, with four pages describing the plates and discussing the latest London and Paris fashions. The presentation was meticulous and for the first few numbers each section was bound in a bright orange wrapper and with engraved title pages.

Montagu Knight's Edwardian Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:50:00 +0000

The star of the exhibits on display for the Edwardian Christmas was a hand written and illustrated menu for Christmas Dinner 1911sent from Sokoto, (Nigeria) listing all the fare of a traditional Christmas dinner:

Soup

Fish Mayonnaise

Stewed Pigeons on Toast

Tomatoe Farcies

Roast Turkey

Saddle of Mutton

Rum Pudding

Fruit Salade

Foie Gras

Coffee & Dessert

We matched it against one in a contemporary cookbook; a game ledger with an entry for the day after Boxing Day 1911; photographs of beaters ready for a shoot; instructions for handmade gifts; an illustrated colour-printed book of entertainments for the family; and a book of eighteenth-century prints that belonged to the Edwardian owners, Montagu and Florence Knight. The book of prints was displayed open at a page with a snowy scene and appropriately drew together two of the most significant periods of the House's history.

Family Bibles: 455 years of Bibles in the Knight Collection at Chawton House Library

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:26:00 +0000

The Knight Family have lived on the estate of Chawton since 1524. Four generations on Elizabeth Knight, whose portrait can be seen in the Great Gallery, made her cousin Thomas May her heir. Thomas May, taking the name Knight united the properties of Chawton and Godmersham Park in Kent. Both houses had libraries and the current Knight Collection now holds what remains.

Thomas Knight’s son, also Thomas, adopted Edward Austen, again a cousin, as his heir. The arrival of Jane Austen in the village in 1809 happened because Edward Austen Knight provided a home in the Bailiff’s Cottage. His son, also Edward, made his home at Chawton from 1826 and Godmersham Park was sold in 1874.The main collection contains a sales catalogue of the estate, and the contents of the library at Godmersham were moved to Chawton House. The holdings of the Godmersham Park Library were recorded in 1818 in the surviving two volume manuscript catalogue, which gives us some idea of the books moved to Chawton after the sale of Godmersham.

Edward died a few years later in 1879 and his son Montagu, inherited Chawton Park. Montagu Knight had a catalogue compiled for the library at Chawton House in 1908 and currently the existing Knight Collection is being catalogued.

The current owner, Richard Knight, inherited the collection in 1989 and no changes have been made to it since then, so with the documentary evidence we have about the family holdings we will in time reconstruct the development, changes and dispersals of a family’s collection over several generations between 1818 and 1989.

This long-term project includes the Bibles held in the Knight Collection at Chawton House Library which date back to before the King James Bible was completed in 1611. It is pertinent at the point where 400 years of the King James Bible is being celebrated to look at one family’s relationship with religion using some of the evidence we have.

William Tyndale produced the first printed translation of the New Testament in English in 1525. The official Great Bible of 1539, with a preface picturing Henry VIII, was intended for reading aloud in churches and it re-used much of Tyndale's work. In 1557 the Geneva (Calvinist) New Testament in English was published, followed in 1560 by the complete Geneva Bible. This was superseded in England in 1568 by the official Bishops' Bible, although the Geneva Bible was still widely used. Then in 1601, there was the new initiative in Scotland which led to the production of the King James Bible in 1611. By about 1900 the language of the King James Bible was seen as increasingly archaic and many other versions have been produced, including the New English Bible, amongst many others, but also one we are familiar with now.

So far I have collated the following list of the bibles in the Knight Collection:

1. Hole, W. (ill.) (1909?) The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: translated out of the original Greek: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty's special command .London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. [Accession no. 9471] Illustrated and containing prayer cards.

2. The New English Bible: New Testament (1961). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press. [Accession no. 9482]

3. The New English Bible: New Testament (1961). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press. [Accession no. 9469] This Bible is dedicated to ‘Anne from Hylda Bannister with many happy memories of Hall Dene School, Alton, and best wishes for a very lovely life in the future’.

4. The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testament; translated out of the original tongues: being the version set forth A.D. 1611 compared with the most ancient authorities and revised (1960). London: The British and Foreign Bible Society. [Accession no. 9483] Inscribed ‘Anne Knight’ with lists of bible readings.

5. The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testament / translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty’s special command; appointed to be read in churches; Authorized King James version; printed by authority (1957). London & New York: Collins’ Clear-Type Press. [Accession no. 9475] inscribed ‘Anne Knight’ and containing a prayer card.

6. The Holy Bible - containing the Old and New Testament translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty’s special command; appointed to be read in churches (1938). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Accession no. 9467]

7. Leusden, J. and Hooght, E.v.d. (eds.) (1831) Biblia Hebraica, secundum ultimam editionem jos. athiae a Johanna Leusden...ab Everado van der Hoght, V. D. M. Editio nova, recognita, et emendata, a Judah D'Allemand. Londini: Typie excudabat A. Macintosh, 20 Great New Street. Impensis Jacobi Duncan, Paternoster Row. [Accession no. 9478] Inside the front board is the stamp of Adela Portal, and inside the back board the bookplate of her son, Montagu Knight.

8. The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testament: translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by His Majesty’s special command. Appointed to be read in churches; Authorized King James version; printed by authority (1929). Oxford: Printed at the University Press, for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. [Accession no. 9481] Contains two black and white bookplates for P. A. Knight of a type , one is Peter Rabbit, that suggests ownership by a child.

9. The child’s Bible being a consecutive arrangement of the narrative and other portions of holy scripture in the words of the authorized version: with upwards of two hundred original illustrations (1897). London: Cassell and Company Limited. [Accession no. 9470]

10. The annotated paragraph Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments, arranged in paragraphs and parallelisms; with explanatory notes, prefaces to the several books, and an entirely new selection of references to parallel and illustrative passages. The Old Testament. (1864). London: The Religious Tract Society. [Accession no. 9472] This bible is that of C.E. Knight (Charles Edward Knight) who was a younger son of Edward Austen Knight and lists the details of his family’s births and deaths from 1846-1918.

11. Scott, T. (ed.) (1850) The Holy Bible; containing the Old and new Testaments, according to the authorized version; with explanatory notes, practical observations, and copious marginal references / by the late Rev. Thomas Scott... a new edition, with the authors last corrections and improvements, and eighty-four illustrative maps and engravings. [New edn.] London: Printed for Messrs. Seeleys, Fleet-Street and Hanover-Street; Hatchard and Co., Piccadilly; and Nisbet and Co., Berners-Street. [Accession no. 9473]

12. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by his Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches. (1841). Oxford: Printed at the University Press, by Samuel Collingwood and Co. printers to the University; for the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. [Accession no. 9484] There are a set of bibles, differing slightly in size but bound similarly, this one is inscribed ‘Chawton Lending Library, 1841’ and because of the context of the 1840 bible seems to have been made available to the village under the influence of Adela Knight.

13. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the original tongues; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by his Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches. Cum privilegio. (1840). Cambridge: Printed by John W. Parker, University Printer; and for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London. [Accession no. 9485] Labelled ‘Chawton House, Blue Room’ and dates from the time of Edward Knight’s marriage to Adela Portal.

14. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the original tongues; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by his Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches. Cum privilegio. (1839). Cambridge: Printed by John W. Parker, University Printer; and for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London. [Accession no. 9487] Bound similarly to the 1840 bible this is labelled ‘Chawton House, Green Dressing Room’ and is a partner to the ‘Blue Room Bible’.

15. Girdlestone, C. (ed.) The Old Testament. With a commentary consisting of short lectures for the daily use of families by the Rev. Charles Girdlestone M.A. vicar of Sedgley, Staffordshire (1837). London: Printed for J. G. & F. Rivington. [Accession no. 9477]

16. Girdlestone, C. (ed.) The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. With a commentary consisting of short lectures for the daily use of families by the Rev. Charles Girdlestone M.A. vicar of Sedgley, Staffordshire (1835). London: Printed for J. G. & F. Rivington. [Accession no. 9476]

Both of the Girdlestone testaments contain the bookplate of Montagu Knight.

17. Scott, T. (ed.) (1835) The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments, according to the authorized version; with explanatory notes, practical observations, and copious marginal references / by Thomas Scott, Rector of Aston Sandford, Bucks. New edn. with the author's last corrections and improvements; and with two maps London: Printed for L. B. Seeley and Sons; Hatchard and Son; Baldwin and Cradock; and R. B. Seeley and Burnside. [Accession no. 9474]

18. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testament / translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty’s special command; appointed to be read in churches (1833). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

19. D'Oyly, G. and Mant, R. (eds.) (1826) The Holy Bible, according to the authorized version; with notes, explanatory and practical taken principally from the most eminent writers of the United Church of England and Ireland: together with appropriate introductions, tables, indexes, maps and plans / prepared and arranged by the Rev. George D'Oyly and the Rev. Richard Mant... under the direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for the use of families. Oxford: Printed for the Society at the Clarendon Press. [Accession no. 9468] This bible contains the bookplate of Edward Knight and lists, as traditionally for a family bible, Edward Knight’s marriage to Adela Portal, his second wife, and the details of their children, including Montagu Knight. This seems to confirm that the ‘Edward Knight’ bookplate found in the Knight Collection is not that of Edward Austen Knight as may have been thought. It also appears that the first leaf has been removed and this may have recorded the details of Edward Jnr.’s first marriage to Mary Dorothea Knatchbull.

20. La Bible qui est toute la Ste. Ecriture du Vieil et du Nouveau Testament autrement L'Ancienne et la Nouvelle Alliance (1678) .Amsterdam: chez la Veuve de Schippers. [Accession no. 9479] Contains Montagu Knight’s bookplate.

21. Cranmer, T. (1585) The Holy Byble, conteining the Olde Testament and the New. Authorised and appointed to be read in churches. Imprinted at London: By Christopher Barker, printer to the Queen's most excellent Maiestie. [Accession no. 8962] contains the bookplate of Montagu Knight.

22. Il Nvovo Ed Eterno Testamento Di Giesv Christo (1556). Lione: Per Giouanni di Tornes e Guillelmo Gazeio. [Accession no. 9480] Contains the bookplate of Montagu Knight.

The next step now is to see which of these can be found in both the 1818 and 1908 catalogues and to see what conclusions can be drawn from this evidence. Were the oldest bibles owned by the Knight family at the time of their publication, or purchased by Montagu Knight? There is a huge preponderance of bibles published from the 1830s and those of the sixteenth century contain Montagu Knight’s bookplate and it may be useful to look further at the influence of the Oxford Movement, and Anglo-Catholicism on Adela Knight, and subsequently her son.

‘But the woods are fine, and there is a stream’: Chawton House Library, gardens, landscape and books.

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Chawton House Library’s main mission is to promote early modern women’s writing as such there is a wealth of material that places women’s writing of the period in context. Garden history considers aesthetic expressions of beauty through art and nature but it can also express an individual’s status or national pride. I took as my title a quote from Austen’s Mansfield Park because Mr Rushworth can only see himself in relation to his material possessions; one of which is his garden. Rushworth refers to Repton and the collection contains an edition of Repton’s Landscape Gardening, as revised by Loudon.

The production of books relevant to gardens and gardening begins historically with herbals. Herbals are a collection of descriptions put together for medicinal purposes and by the late-seventeenth century had to some extent become reference manuals for plant identification, relying on direct observation. The herbals in the collection seem to be logical starting point historically and this article considers a few of those to be found in the Library’s holdings but many more can be identified by referring to the online catalogue, available through the website:

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/

The striking herbal of Elizabeth Blackwell is one that is particularly poignant as part of the collection at Chawton House Library because of the convergence of Blackwell’s life and work: the need to make money and the use of her talents in doing so. She is an example of many women in the collection who wrote to survive financially and who managed to do so because of their intelligence and talent:

A curious herbal, containing five hundred cuts, of the most useful plants, which are now used in the practice of physic. Engraved on folio copper plates, after drawings taken from the life. By Elizabeth Blackwell (1737).

Elizabeth Blackwell (bap. 1707, d. 1758) was a botanical author and artist and her husband Alexander Blackwell used her dowry to establish a printing business in London, near the Strand. The business foundered and by 1734 he was incarcerated in the debtors’ prison. Blackwell extricated her husband from his difficulties with her reproductions of medicinal plants. She took lodgings in Swan Walk, Chelsea, close to the botanical garden where she found the living models for her botanical drawings. This text is an early issue with over half the plates coloured by a nineteenth-century hand.

Alongside this are later books of botany produced by Frances Arabella Rowden, Mary Lawrance, Jane Marcet and Mary Roberts. These works are primarily educational and highlight how the natural sciences were both being taught and what was seen an acceptable branch of science for women.

1. A poetical introduction to the study of botany. By Frances Arabella Rowden (1801).

Frances Arabella Rowden (1774-1840?) was a schoolmistress and poet, born in London, and initially educated by her aunt in Henley-on-Thames. In 1792 she entered the same school Austen attended, the forerunner of today’s Abbey School in Reading. This text comprises an exhaustive botanical classification interspersed with lush poems resonant with the chaste yearnings of her own young pupils, which included Mary Russell Mitford and Lady Caroline Lamb, also authors included in the collections at Chawton House Library.

2. Sketches of flowers from nature. By Mary Lawrance, teacher of botanical drawing, No. 86, Queen Ann-Street East, Portland-Place (1801).

Mary Lawrance (1794-1830) was a flower painter who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1795. The text Sketches of nature was first published in 1801. In 1804 she was known to be giving botanical drawing lessons at ½ a guinea a lesson and a guinea entrance.

3. Conversations on botany, Jane Marcet (Sarah Mary Fitton and Elizabeth Fitton) (1818).

Jane Marcet (1769-1858) was a writer on science and political economy. Her wealthy and comfortable parents respected her intellectual curiosity and encouraged her as an intelligent thinker. She married Alexander Marcet, a physiological chemist, in 1799 and together they entertained some of the most distinguished scientists and thinkers of their time. She was a friend of Maria Edgeworth, Sir Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday. Marcet was depressive and she found relief in hard and useful work, which was encouraged by her husband, and her educational texts became the bulk of her literary output.

4. The wonders of the vegetable kingdom displayed. In a series of letters. By the author of ‘Select female biography,’ Mary Roberts (1822).

Mary Roberts (1788-1864) was raised a Quaker, and with her family later followed Joanna Southcott’s millenarianism. She wrote religious works as well as books about natural history. Wonders of the vegetal kingdom as an earlier example of her work had an observational freshness that was lacking in her later work which often sought to show the attributes of God through the natural world he created. I suggest, without the time for further research, that she was uncomfortable with the assessments emerging from contemporary scientific observation.

Current critical works examining the relationship of women to science in the collection are held in the post-1900 collection and they reveal the analysis that has been made of women’s writing in this field during the long eighteenth century:

1. Botany, sexuality and women’s writing 1760-1830: from modest shoot to forward plant, Sam George (2007).

2. The scientific lady: a social history of women’s scientific interests 1520-1918, Patricia Phillips (1990).

As well as herbals and botanical reference books the collections at Chawton House Library contain books about landscaping and gardening. Returning to Rushworth in Mansfield Park, the landscaping of a landowner’s property could indicate both his wealth and his place as a man of fashion, and Repton is the name bandied about by Rushworth.

The landscape gardening and landscape architecture of the late Humphry Repton, esq. being his entire works on these subjects. A new edition: with an historical and scientific introduction … by J. C. Loudon (1840).

Humphry Repton (1752-1818) was a landscape gardener who was originally apprenticed to an East Anglian textile manufacturer. After his parents’ deaths he became a gentleman amateur, taking a tenancy on Old Hall, Sustead, and spent his time reading, writing, drawing and improving his small farm. After he no longer had the money to support this life he used his abilities as a sketcher and writer to become a professional landscape gardener. He secured wealthy clients, presented himself as the ‘heir’ to Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, although he never took on the same scale of work, but established his reputation through writing. In this respect he addressed the increasing alignment of landscape and architecture. Loudon did what Repton, the snob, did not wish to do and that was to publish a cheaper edition of his work, while double-handedly inviting criticism of Repton and at the same time utilising the popularity of his ideas.

Chawton House was not exempt from its owners’ requirements for the fashions of the times, as we can see from the gardens around us today: from Edward Knight’s walled garden to the later additions requisite for the Repton-esque landscaped grounds and the Lutyens-inspired Library Terrace. The Knight Collection at Chawton House Library contains a very different book to Repton’s:

Abercrombie’s practical gardener, or improved system of modern horticulture; adapted to either small or large gardens: designed to assist those gentleman who manage their own gardens. (1823).

John Abercrombie (1726-1806), the son of an Edinburgh market gardener, was a horticulturist and writer. After attending the Grammar School, he first worked for his father and about 1750 he was employed at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, then at Leicester House. He worked for nearly twenty years as a gardener for the wealthy and his clients included the botanist William Munro. He subsequently ran his own market gardens and published his first book on practical gardening in 1767.

The fashionable garden could be created at the right price for men like Mr Rushworth and this commodification of the elements of landscape and the natural world are discussed further in some of the Library’s acquisitions of recent research:

1. Luxury and pleasure in eighteenth-century Britain, Maxine Berg (2007).

2. Luxury in the eighteenth century: debates, desires and delectable goods, edited by Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger (2003).

3. The consumption of culture 1600-1800: image, object, text, edited by Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (1995).

A garden was one prized luxury good in the eighteenth century and many others: porcelain, lacquer-ware, and textiles, traded by merchant companies posted out in India and the Far East were adapted for the European market by including the landscapes, images and from the natural world – such as flowers – popular at that time. Again to illustrate some of the breadth of the collection there are books that consider these aspects of eighteenth-century life and create context for the main collection, the books, not exclusively by women, dating from 1600-1830:

1. Chintz: Indian textiles for the West, Rosemary Crill (2008).

2. Authentic décor: the domestic interior 1620-1920, Peter Thornton (1984).

A Bold Stroke for a Theatre Company

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:44:00 +0000

Last Friday, a few employees from Chawton House Library took a trip to The Theatre Royal (http://secure.theatreroyal.org/PEO/site/home/index.php?), Bury St. Edmunds, to tour the beautiful Georgian theatre and watch a production of Hannah Cowley's 'A Bold Stroke for a Husband'.

The play was highly entertaining and I would thoroughly recommend the Little Bear Theatre Company - Hannah Cowley would have been proud! Have a look at their website for future productions http://www.littlebeartheatre.com/ and more information about them.

We have been reading 18th century female playwrights, including Misses Cowley and Pix, in the Chawton House Library monthly reading group and have discussed how well they would translate for a modern audience. I was happy for us to be proved right. Surely the success of this adaptation will encourage more theatre companies to produce the plays of these highly talented, but often forgotten, women.

Birth of the British Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 16:06:00 +0000

Henry Hitchings was filmed at Chawton House Library talking about Frances Burney with Emma Clery, Professor of Eighteenth Century Studies, University of Southampton. The page of subscribers from Camilla featuring Jane Austen referred to during the filming is the illustration above. You can see the programme using the following URL for another 6 days:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ydj1p

Mary Delany inspring fashion

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 15:27:00 +0000

The dramatic art of Mary Delany with black backgrounds and vibrant colours continues to inspire fashion, as featured on the blog Peak of Chic:

http://thepeakofchic.blogspot.com/2011/01/mrs-delany-still-fashionable-centuries.html

Chawton House Library Reading Group: New season 2010-2011

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 09:31:00 +0000

The reading group convened again on Monday 20 September to discuss Ashton Priory one of the rare texts in the collection. Ashton Priory can be accessed as part of the Novels-On-Line project http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/novels.html, or purchased as a paperback from Chawton House Library. It was an extremely lively session and we discussed whether it was a Gothic novel, the history of the Minerva Press, stock characters, Restoration comedy and whether or not it was a morality tale.The demand of a reading public for novels in the eighteenth century and the advent of Gothic and romance novels brought a need for libraries accessible to the general public. William Lane took advantage of this and opened a lending library in 1763 in Whitechapel, moving to Leadenhall Street in 1790 where he set up Minerva Press. Minerva Press dominated the novel publishing business for the next fifteen years and Ashton Priory is one example of its output. Ashton Priory, written in 1792 and published anonymously, is not a Gothic novel, it is melodramatic but it has no element of horror. Its stock characters are reminiscent of Restoration comedy and the novels of Henry Fielding, such as Sir Bevil Grimstone, an old fop well-past his best and the malapropisms of the tyrannical Butterfield matriarch. Money and society, female education and the promotion of meritocracy are the central themes woven around the romances of the young and the subterfuges of the covetous. The trials Charlotte and Eliza face result from the greed of others: Charlotte narrowly escapes a forced marriage to a licentious nobleman who has offered to ‘buy’ her from her guardian; Eliza, the erstwhile romantic novel reader, faced with the fragility of respectability when she is left destitute by her husband evades prostitution. Eliza dies tragically, punished for the fanciful notions that she develops from her reading, and the well-balanced, irritatingly virtuous Charlotte is rewarded by marriage to the man she loves. She merits reward in this tale, as do her brother, members of the Sanders family and the man who becomes her husband, George Danby. They all are hard-working, socially responsible characters. The villains of the story: the avaricious, the lustful, the lazy, the conceited, have to change or loose status, die and face disgrace. We had to conclude it was a morality tale and an emphatically middle class one. Over the year we will several more of the books that form part of the Novels-On-Line project including The Castle of Tynemouth by Jane Harvey and Cava of Toledo; or, the Gothic Princess, Augusta Amelia Stuart.

A Case of Mental Courage

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:55:00 +0000

David Brooks has written in the New York Times about mental character and rigour in thought quoting Frances Burney as an example of mental fortitude:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/opinion/24brooks.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

To quote Brooks: 'In 1811, the popular novelist Fanny Burney learned she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia. She lay down on an old mattress, and a piece of thin linen was placed over her face, allowing her to make out the movements of the surgeons above her.' Burney suffered physically and mentally for months after her operation but forced herself to face it, and write about it with moral fortitude. Brooks presents her as a role model for all of us now in how we should step back and think about our own weaknesses in thinking.

The image above shows a photograph of the Frances Burney books in the collection at Chawton House Library and we also have a developing collection of critical works of and about Burney.

That 'known scribbler': Frances Burney in the collection at Chawton House Library

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:21:00 +0000

Chawton House Library has first and early editions of Frances Burney's work and the titles of her novels are known from references in the writing of Jane Austen, her contemporary and fan, and the endeavours of feminist scholars to 'rediscover' the works of early modern women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. Burney was, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, a renowned and influential novelist, but after her death she became known primarily as a diarist. After Pepys she may well be the second most important social commentator with her journals and letters (1768-1839) reflecting upheavals in British and European culture and history. Her life-writing also reveals her concerns about her literary ambitions and achievements as an eigtheenth-century woman writer.

The Library's Frances Burney holdings can be found on the catalogue:

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/index.html

'Adorn'd with Cuts': the Illustrated Book in the Eighteenth Century

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:37:00 +0000

We held at conference at Chawton House Library today that drew on the growing interest and debate about the use of images to illustrate texts in the flourishing print culture of the eighteenth century. The conference drew together different approaches to book illustration in order to consider the production, purpose and interpretation of images in books of this date. The photograph above shows an exhibition of a number of the Library's most intriguing illustrated texts curated for this event.

The day's speakers included Helen Cole, University of Southampton and Chawton House Library; John Feather, University of Loughborough; Ann Lewis, Birkbeck College, University of London and Brian Alderson, Institute of English Studies. The presentations had one overriding theme in common: questions about how readers used images in their understanding of the texts, and what publishers were trying to communicate with their use of images.

The exhibition displayed books thematically: diagrammatic illustration, fashion and fiction, conduct literature, artists and engravers, portraits and tales of terror. The books displayed included Behn's translation of La Montre, Mirror of the Graces, Halifax's Advice to a Daughter, Blackwell's Herbal, Heywood's Examplary Women and Wilkinson's Lisette of Savoy.

Chawton House Library Reading Group 2010-2011

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:32:00 +0000

The Library runs a reading group for the discussion of the work of women writers, 1600 to 1830,The group meets each month, September to May, on the third Monday of the month at 2pm. Afternoon tea is available during the Reading Group meetings for £2.50 per person.

This year we are going to read some of the novels-on-line texts which will be available in paperback and we will focus on the Gothic. The profits from the books published by Chawton House Library go towards new acquisitions to continue the development of the library’s collection. As 2011the bicentenary of the publication of Sense and Sensibility that has to be on the list!

Chawton House Library Reading Group Schedule 2010-2011

Monday 20 September 2010 Ashton Priory, Anonymous. Chawton House Library Books £15.00

Monday 18 October 2010 The Poems of Charlotte Smith, ed. Stuart Curran. OUP USA; New edition edition £18.00 (A selection of poems from the book will be selected by Ruth Facer, a member of the group and an independent scholar.)

Monday 15 November 2010 The Castle of Tynemouth, Jane Harvey. Chawton House Library Books (price tbc.)

Monday 20 December 2010 The ‘Blazing World’ and other writings, Margaret Cavendish. Penguin £9.99

Monday 17 January 2011 The Princess of Cleves. An Historical Novel, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Verne La Fayette. Chawton House Library Books (price tbc.)

Monday 21 February and Monday 21 March 2011 Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists, Mary Pix, Susanna Centlivre, Elizabeth Griffith, Hannah Cowley. £9.99 (We will discuss 2 plays from this book for each of these 2 sessions.)

Monday 18 April 2011 Cava of Toledo; or, the Gothic Princess, Augusta Amelia Stuart. Chawton House Library Books (price tbc.)

Monday 16 May 2011 Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen. Penguin £3.99

Susannah Centlivre discussed on Radio 4

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 11:48:00 +0000

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2006_45_mon.shtml

Centlivre's The Wonder is April's book for the Chawton House Library reading group. It is a lively, fast-paced comedy and you will be able to read a review later.

Chawton House Library Images

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Chawton House Library has a wealth of illustrations, and decorative frontispieces, hidden away between the pages of the books, as well as stunning collections of paintings and maps. All of the images used on this blog are from these and are copyright to Chawton House Library. They can be provided by application to the Library for other publications, contact library@chawton.net.

Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Millenium Hall is a book I have meant to read for years and when one of the Visiting Fellows at Chawton House Library likened the fellowships to having one's own 'Millenium Hall' - even down to the fruit and vegetables from the Walled Garden and the chickens (all the fellows at that point were women but it's not always so) . I knew it was time to read it and put it on the list for the reading group.

Sarah Scott creates a sanctuary for women at Millenium Hall and like Chawton House Library men are welcomed. Unlike Chawton House Library she seeks to reveal to men their abuses of women; Chawton House Library seeks to educate all equally about the neglected women writers of our literary history. The male narrator of Scott's novel provides a positive and engaging account of Millenium Hall as he and his companion, Lamont, discover it by accident on an excursion in the countryside. He describes it as an 'earthly paradise' and throughout the novel his glowing reports of the house and its inhabitants is interspersed with the stories of the women that live there.

The women at Millenium Hall have all suffered abuse by men: unhappy marriages, tyrannical husbands, attempted rape, the prejudice of fathers, illegitimacy and abandonment. Together they have created an idyllic female community and Scott's novel presents us with a utopian vision for another way of living other than the assumption that women must have their lives determined by men: husbands, or fathers and brothers if they fail to marry. Scott's women have not failed because they reject wedlock for themselves, instead they carve out fulfilling lives in a different and more independent way.

While utopian Scott's novel is not revolutionary; she does not seek to overturn the status quo - the women at Millenium Hall declare themselves in favour of marriage - which with the development of a Christian and philanthropic community, she in fact upholds conservative values. Her novel is semi-autobiographical, with her own experiences of an unhappy marriage, and a life-long deep female friendship, have been transformed into creating a vision of another way of living for those that wish to choose it.

Epistolary Literature

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:10:00 +0000

Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time website makes available a programme from 2007 on epistolary fiction in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00775dh

It includes references to writers in the collection at Chawton House Library, such as Aphra Behn and Frances Burney. As a genre, epistolary fiction, was a hugely popular and novels by both well- and lesser-known authors are held in the collection. Many of these novels also remain anonymous and Chawton House Library has about 280 of these.

Chawton House Library Reading Group

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:27:00 +0000

The next meeting of the group will be on Monday 18 January and we will be reading:

The History of Mary Prince: a West Indian Slave (1831) by Mary Prince. It can be purchased from the Chawton House Library online store http://www.chawtonhouse.org/shop/index.html.

The inclement weather meant that the Reading Group did not meet on Monday 21 December (we would have been snowed in at Chawton!) and I have promised the group members that we will discuss The Sylph by Georgiana Cavendish first and then move onto Mary Prince, so that no reading, or preparation for the session, will be wasted.

Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 09:14:00 +0000

The book in October for the reading group was Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, first published in 1796. It was Wollstonecraft’s last book published during her lifetime and the most popular. The book consists of twenty-five letters written whilst Wollstonecraft travelled round Scandinavia with her baby daughter Fanny.

The letters are primarily a travelogue of the countries Wollstonecraft visits, describing the countries, the people and the beautiful landscapes. She also comments on the political problems, she witnessed. In Norway, in letter thirteen she describes how peasants are recruited into the army, and how unfair the system is that they are not allowed to choose whether they go into service at sea of for the army: ‘And what appears more tyrannical, the inhabitants of certain districts are appointed for the land, others for the sea service.’ Compared with her other travels in France and England, the old aristocracy in Norway and Sweden seemed harsher to her. For instance she saw how criminals are enslaved in Norway, and how the people of Christiana rose to protest the cost of grain: ‘They threw stones at Mr. Anker, the owner of it, as he rode out of town to escape their fury.’

However one of the main themes throughout the book is Wollstonecraft’s questioning of commerce in the countries, and she does not hide her dislike of it. She discusses the war economy that has developed in Scandinavia, creating an unjust taxation on the people involved in the conflict. Her conclusion results in poor commerce, as well as allowing more merchants to take advantage, of more people. She believes that commerce: ‘wears out the most sacred principle of humanity and rectitude.’ She compares the systems in Norway and Sweden to those in England and France, believing that commerce helped with revolution but the people there should be careful of relying to heavily on the system, otherwise it will turn back to the old ways of governing. And by the end of her travels she is particularly scathing: ‘men, indeed seem of the species of the fungus; and the insolent vulgarity which a sudden influx of wealth usually produces in common minds.’

The book is very emotional one, as well as political. Wollstonecraft initially took the trip for her lover Gilbert Imlay, to retrieve a stolen treasure ship for him (although this is never mentioned directly in the book itself) in hope that this would mend their fading relationship. Her feelings over Imlay are reflected in many of the letters, particularly towards the end of the book, when she perceives that Imlay is no longer committed to the relationship or their daughter. The letters do not mention Imlay specifically as they are all written in the first person, but whilst discussing her ideas on commerce, it can be seen that she attacking a specific person: ‘Ah! I shall whisper to you –that you—yourself are strangely altered since you have entered deeply into commerce.’ This is from letter twenty-three when she is in Hamburg, where Imlay was supposed to meet her but failed to, so her emotional state had worsened and this can be easily felt through her writing. A result of this is she leaves for London earlier than expected and so ends the book, giving it a slightly rushed and unfinished feeling to it, reflecting the author’s troubled emotional state.

Morwenna Roche

A Simple Story by Elizabeth Inchbald

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Inchbald's A Simple Story was the reading group's first book of of the 2009-2010 season. The title seems to deliberately provoke us into thinking what is simple about this story. The plot is far from simple, some of the characters are forced to navigate complicated social situations and we are left at the end with the unsatisfactory assertion that daughters require 'a proper education'. Who though in this story does receive a proper education?

The narrative spans two generations and Inchbald does not neatly resolve the problems of the first generation with a happy marriage promised between the second generation, as Emily Bronte does later in her two generation tale Wuthering Heights. In the first half of the novel the troubled courtship of Miss Milner and Dorriforth ends in their marriage but at this point, at the end of volume II, the reader knows it is a doomed marriage. Dorriforth, now Lord Elmwood, puts a mourning ring on his bride's finger.

Inchbald's ironic treatment of which of these two has received a proper education prompts us to question what an education is, should be and what its purpose is. Miss Milner, we are told, is a spoiled and indulged young woman who has not received a proper education. She abandons herself to frivolity and does not apply herself to the correct forms for ideal female behaviour in the opinion of other characters. She is however sensitive and responsive to the circumstances and emotions of those she cares about. While she can be impulsive, she is also more consistently compassionate towards others than any other character in the novel. Dorriforth has received the proper education for a man of his position but he is dogmatic, and unyielding, in his judgement of others. It is quite clear that he falls in love with Miss Milner despite himself and his education has taught him nothing about human understanding and compassion. The differences in temperament between the two leads irrevocably to the breakdown of their marriage.

Matilda, their daughter, grows up in rural isolation with her exiled mother. After her mother's death she lives in a house her father rarely visits under the condition that he is never to see her. She does meet her cousin, Rushbrook, and they become friends - again two characters of very different temperament. This time Rushbrook is the giddier one despite a correct education for a young man of his status. He is the heir to the Elmwood title, not Matilda, and Matilda schooled 'by adversity' is the more serious and bookish. In exile with her mother she had the run of a library and occupied herself with reading. A phenomenon amongst several women Inchbald was acquainted with who had intellectual ambition but no formal education. At the end of the novel we our left with no clear sense that Matilda will accept Rushbrook's proposal of marriage; we are also left wondering who in this novel has had a proper education. In some respects Miss Milner's open spirit with genuinely felt emotional responses seems the more attractive, even if she is finally broken.

National Poetry Day

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 11:21:00 +0000

Aphra Behn: The Libertine, 1640-1689

A THOUSAND martyrs I have made,
All sacrificed to my desire,
A thousand beauties have betray'd
That languish in resistless fire:
The untamed heart to hand I brought,
And fix'd the wild and wand'ring thought.

I never vow'd nor sigh'd in vain,
But both, tho' false, were well received;
The fair are pleased to give us pain,
And what thay wish is soon believed:
And tho' I talked of wounds and smart,
Love's pleasures only touch'd my heart.

Alone the glory and the spoil
I always laughing bore away;
The triumphs without pain or toil,
Without the hell the heaven of joy;
And while I thus at random rove
Despise the fools that whine for love.

Next CHL Reading Group meeting

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:22:00 +0000

Time has passed so rapidly and our next meeting is on Monday 21 September and we are reading Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story. To purchase this book visit our page on Amazon:

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chawhouslibr-21

It will raise funds for the Library and help us to keep developing the collection.

Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:45:00 +0000

CHL Library news and quirky personal peccadilloes http://twitter.com/jacquigrainger

The Madwoman in the Attic

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:25:00 +0000

This week's Times Higher Education features The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar under its series on the literary canon ('The Canon', p. 47). A text I'm glad to say we have in the collection here at Chawton House Library. Deborah D. Rogers, professor of English at the University of Maine, ends her article with a question often raised about the recovery of women writers: '... some argue that ghettoising female authors is no longer necessary to counteract their marginalisation. For them, the time has come for a more integrative history of literature. But, echoing my children's complaints on long drives, I can't help but ask: "Are we there yet?"'

Hester Thrale Piozzi

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:21:00 +0000

It's excellent to see Hester Thrale Piozzi, TLS August 7 2009, featured in the Life and Lives of Dr Johnson (just as she should be!) at The National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition runs until December 13.

Read Man of Fetters: Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/12/08/081208crat_atlarge_gopnik

and search our online catalogue for Thrale Piozzi holdings at Chawton House Library:

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/index.html

Villette by Charlotte Bronte and Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

noreply@blogger.com (Jacqui Grainger, Librarian) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:24:00 +0000

As I've been on annual leave there has been time to listen to the radio and BBC Radio 4 have featured dramatisations of both Villette and Ruth. Catch up with them on i-player:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ltt32

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvg9b

There's also been lots of fun with Desperate Romantics and BBC 2:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvyq2