Events Diary June - December 2015
www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Chawton House Library provides an internationally respected research and learning centre for the study of early women’s writing from 1600 to 1830, and develops and maintains access to the library’s unique collection for the benefit of scholarship and wider society. A registered charity, we are also responsible for the protection and conservation of the Elizabethan house once belonging to Jane Austen’s brother Edward Knight, and for the gardens and estate that provide the historical setting and backdrop to the library.
Welcome to this events programme for the second half of 2015.
There is something for everyone with open gardens, music recitals, and talks on everything from women and the Battle of Agincourt to clothing in the time of Jane Austen, needle skills to the heroines of gardening, and authors from Isabelle de Charrière to Eliza Haywood. This programme reflects all aspects of our library collection, and eighteenth-century literature, culture and heritage more generally. We remain at the forefront of academic research in the long eighteenth century with conferences on eighteenth-century actresses and authors, and the ground-breaking 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice. It is also our privilege to host a conference in memory of the late Professor Marilyn Butler, our Patron. Whether your interests lie in the Library collection, the historic backdrop of the house, or the idyllic gardens and estate, we hope to welcome you to Chawton House Library soon.
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
June
13 JUN 14 JUN 1.00 pm to 5.00 pm
Chawton Open Gardens This June, we will be taking part in Chawton Open Gardens, a celebration of the village’s beautiful gardens. Here at the Library you can enjoy the views across the parkland, discover the walled kitchen garden and explore the wilderness. The main house will also be open for the special price of £4 for adults and £2 for children (6-16) with the opportunity to see a display of treasures from our collection on the themes of gardening, botany and herbal remedies. Tickets for this event are available on the day. Tickets (includes access to all the open gardens in the Village of Chawton, but not to the main house at Chawton House Library): £5; accompanied children free. Profits go to village projects
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
june
20-28 JUN Jane Austen Regency Week Tours and Cream Tea Enjoy a fascinating guided tour of the Elizabethan manor referred to as the ‘Great House’ in Jane Austen’s letters. To mark the 200th anniversary of its publication in December 2015, there will also be the opportunity to see a display relating to Jane Austen’s Emma, featuring the first edition of the novel held in our library collection. Tours are from Tuesday to Friday with Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday’s tours starting at 2.00 pm and Thursday’s tour starting at 11.00 am. There are limited places, so it is essential to book ahead. Tickets: £15; Children: £8 (includes cream tea)
6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Talk: Clothing in the Time of Jane Austen Eleanor Houghton (University of Southampton)
24 JUN
Jane Austen lived through a time of tremendous political, social and economic upheaval. This was reflected in the rapidly changing fashions of the era, as they evolved from the wide-hooped skirts and powdered hair of the 1770s to the high-waisted, muslin dresses of the Regency period. As well as navigating these revolutionary changes in fashion, women of Austen’s class and time also had to adhere to the strict sartorial codes and conventions set by society. Using material taken from the Chawton House Library collection, together with many other contemporary sources, Eleanor Houghton will explore how these issues would have affected Jane Austen and the characters in her novels. Eleanor Houghton read English at the University of Oxford before running her own business as a couture milliner, designing and making bespoke hats, as well as historically accurate bonnets. In 2012, she began the Chawton MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Southampton and is currently in her first year of a PhD. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
JULY
2.00 pm – 4.00 pm
02 JUL
Afternoon Talk Needle Skills For Girls: Plain and Embroidered Samplers in the Long Eighteenth Century In the Long Gallery of Chawton House Library hangs Mary Pennington’s charmingly embroidered sampler, lovingly restored thanks to a generous donation. Mary, its ten year-old seamstress, made the sampler in 1830 under the tutelage of a governess. For girls throughout Britain until the introduction of state-sponsored schools, needle arts played a vital role in their education. In the eighteenth century, girls from the age of three were taught how to hold and thread a needle and learnt to do simple stitches. How girls were taught, whether at home, at school or with a governess, varied with income, and changed over time. In this talk Naomi Tarrant, author of Remember Now Thy Creator: Scottish Girls’ Samplers, 1700 - 1872, will explore the British samplers of the long eighteenth century and examine their place within the lives of the girls who made them. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes tea, coffee and cake)
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
JULY
09 JUL 10 JUL A Two-Day Conference with Special Evening Events: Actress as Author – Nell Gwyn to Ellen Terry Keynote speakers: Professor Maggie Gale (University of Manchester) and Professor Jacky Bratton (Royal Holloway) The stage offered women an unprecedented freedom to speak out. It was a place where women were listened to, where they were respected, and where they had the potential to out-earn their male colleagues. This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore all the ways in which actresses were invested with authority, either as authors of texts, of characters, or of their own personae. Each day of the conference includes a special evening event: • A performance of ‘Memories, Screens, and Reflections: After Fanny Kelly’s Dramatic Recollections’ by Professor of Women’s Performance History, Gilli Bush-Bailey (University of London). • A preview talk of the exhibition entitled ‘Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen and the Cult of Celebrity’. The exhibition, to be held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC in late 2016, will explore the parallel afterlives of arguably the two most popular writers in the English language. Registration: £120 for both days (includes lunch, drinks reception and admission to the evening events). Concessions and one-day tickets available. Tickets are also available separately for ‘Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen and the Cult of Celebrity’ for £11 or £8.50 for students or Friends Please visit our website for more information and the programme
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
JULY
16 JUL 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Talk and Piano Recital: Women and the Battle of Agincourt Professors Anne Curry and David Owen Norris (University of Southampton) 600 years after the battle, Agincourt remains well-known and meaningful to people today. But is there a feminine dimension to it which we have overlooked? Professor Anne Curry will consider a number of fascinating texts written soon after the battle, and in direct response to it, which emphasise the impact on the women of France of the loss of so many of their menfolk. The talk will be accompanied by piano music from David Owen Norris and students from the University of Southampton. The programme will include pieces with special reference to the events of 1415. Anne Curry is Professor of Medieval History and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Southampton. She has published extensively on England and France in the later middle ages, and especially on the battle of Agincourt. David Owen Norris is a pianist, broadcaster & composer. His latest piano solo CD received a double-five-star review in BBC Music Magazine and he was referred to as ‘quite possibly the most interesting pianist in the world’ by the Toronto Globe and Mail. Tickets: £18.50; Students/Friends £15.00 (includes drinks and canapés)
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
september
05 SEP 10 am-6 pm
Conference BBC Pride and Prejudice 1995: Reflections Around a Much-Loved Production In September 1995, a production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice aired on BBC One. Adapted by Andrew Davies, produced by Sue Birtwistle and directed by Simon Langton, this six-part serial made instant stars of several of the actors and gripped the nation. Twenty years on, Chawton House Library invites you to a day of talks to celebrate and commemorate this landmark in television history. Speakers who have published widely on Jane Austen in adaptation will reflect on the place of Pride and Prejudice in popular culture before and after 1995. Simon Langton, Director, will reminisce on his own role, and the day will close with a roundtable involving some of the original cast and crew. Speakers include: Simon Langton, Director of the 1995 production, whose credits include many period-drama productions for television; Devoney Looser (Arizona State University, author of Jane Austen and Discourses of Feminism); Nora Nachumi (Yeshiva University, author of Acting Like a Lady: British Women Novelists and the Late Eighteenth-Century Stage); Sayre Greenfield (University of Pittsburg, Greensburg) and Linda Troost (Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, editors of Jane Austen in Hollywood), and Juliette Wells (Goucher College, author of Everybody’s Jane: Austen in the Popular Imagination). Tickets: £55 (includes lunch and evening drinks reception); Students/Friends £45 For full programme details, please see our website
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
SEPTEMBER
06 SEP 11.00 am – 4.00 pm
Open House and Gardens Walk in Jane Austen’s footsteps as you stroll through the lime avenue and enjoy the views across the South Lawn of uninterrupted parkland with grazing sheep and shire horses. Visitors can discover the walled kitchen garden built by Austen’s brother Edward, explore the wilderness and relax in the peace and tranquility of the memorial rose garden. This is also an opportunity to explore the fascinating manor house with its blend of architectural styles and features developed throughout 400 years of history and find inspiration in the lives and works of our women writers. Refreshments will be available from the Old Kitchen. Tickets: £6; Children (6-16 years) £3.30 Tickets are available on the day
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
SEPTEMBER
16 SEP 17 SEP Conference Isabelle de Charrière and England: An English Celebration Organised by the Genootschap Belle van Zuylen (the Dutch Isabelle de Charrière Society) Isabelle de Charrière/Belle van Zuylen (1740-1805) was a celebrated Dutch writer who lived in the Netherlands until 1770 and moved to Switzerland after her marriage. A true cosmopolitan, her novels – all published in French – are often compared to Jane Austen’s. During this two-day meeting, speakers from Zuylen Castle and Leiden University in the Netherlands, the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and Butler University in Indianapolis (USA) will give talks on Charrière’s life and works, her reception in England, and her contribution to the novel in the latter half of the eighteenth century. For full programme details, and a list of speakers, please see our website
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
SEPTEMBER
20 SEP 10.00 am – 1.30 pm
Horse Fun Ride After the success of last year’s fun ride around our magnificent historic estate and parkland, we are delighted to be hosting the event for the second year. This is a rare chance to hack through over six miles of beautiful and normally restricted farmland with cross country jumps for the more experienced rider. The first riders will start at 10.00 am and the last at 1.30 pm – you will have the opportunity to request start times when booking. Refreshments will be available to buy all day and the gardens will be open from 10.00 am - 3.00 pm, with free entry for riders and their helpers. Tickets: £15 (including a £2.50 fee for St John Ambulance) Tickets will be available to buy online until Tuesday 15th September at 5.00 pm. After this time, they will be available on the day for £20 For more information and conditions of entry, please see our website
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
SEPTEMBER
22 SEP 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Book Launch: Introducing the Jane Austen Short Story Competition Winner’s Anthology
Chawton House Library’s Jane Austen Short Story Competition celebrates the life and work of Jane Austen by inspiring and encouraging new writers. We received hundreds of fantastic entries in 2013 with stories taking their inspiration from minor characters in Austen’s cherished novels and telling the tales that continued behind the scenes, at Pemberley, in Mansfield Park, and elsewhere. In the Dining Room of Chawton House Library, where Jane Austen regularly dined with her brother Edward, we will hear about the difficult process of selecting the stories and enjoy readings from the anthology entitled Beguiling Miss Bennet. The winner and finalists of the competition will give us an insight into their passion for creative writing and their inspiration for taking part in the competition. Tickets: £8.50; Students/Friends £6.00 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
OCTOBER
06 OCT 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm recital
Music Recital: The Oriental Miscellany - ‘Wild but Pleasing When Understood’ Professor Jane Chapman (Royal College of Music)
‘remarkable colourful performances…florid ornamental flourishes unlike anything found in European music of the time’ The Telegraph Jane Chapman plays music from the Oriental Miscellany. Published in Calcutta in 1789, this fascinating transcription and adaptation of Indian music for harpsichord, creates a fascinating glimpse into life in India during the Georgian period. The performance is illustrated with letters and diaries by women who were central to collecting this music and will feature the Letters on India of intrepid woman writer in our collection, Maria Graham (1785 - 1842). Described in the Wall Street Journal as ‘one of Britain’s most distinguished classical harpsichordists’, Jane Chapman is at the forefront of creating, inspiring and discovering new music for harpsichord. She has premiered over 200 solo, chamber and electroacoustic works worldwide, and researched and recorded important musical sources from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on original instruments. Equally passionate about baroque and contemporary music, she has collaborated with ground-breaking composers, artists and dancers, working with musicians from the worlds of Indian music, jazz, and the avant-garde. Tickets: £18.50; Students/Friends £15 (includes drinks and canapés)
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
OCTOBER
12
OCT 2.00 pm – 4.00 pm
Talk, Book Signing and Afternoon Tea ‘The First Ladies of Gardening’: An Illustrated Talk by Heidi Howcroft and Marianne Majerus It was more by chance than design that the fourteen gardens selected by Heidi Howcroft and Marianne Majerus were created or maintained predominantly by women – women who have overcome obstacles, learnt by doing, and created unique gardens for their own personal use, little thinking that their work would be so highly regarded. In this talk, Heidi Howcroft will explore the role of these pioneers of the quintessential English garden and also of newer, lesser-known heroines of the gardening world. First Ladies of Gardening shows that there is not just a single type of English garden but a diverse range of glorious and inspiring alternatives all beautifully photographed by award-winning photographer Marianne Majerus. Marianne captures the spirit of a place; a talent honed by an appreciation of the qualities and power of light; aspects that she will illustrate in a presentation of her work during the course of the afternoon. Heidi Howcroft is an English-educated landscape architect and author of over 25 garden books. She has a wide knowledge of contemporary and historical European gardens and landscapes. Marianne Majerus is a London-based multi award-winning garden photographer, whose photographs have been published worldwide. Amongst her many accolades she was named International Garden Photographer of the Year in 2010 and Garden Media Guild ‘Features Photographer of the Year’ in 2013. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes tea, coffee and cake)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
OCTOBER
29 OCT 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Lecture: No More Heroes? Austen, Byron and the Aftermath of War Professor Fiona Stafford (University of Oxford) In this bicentenary year of the Battle of Waterloo, how should the Napoleonic wars be remembered, and what were the consequences of such massive, prolonged warfare for traditional ideas of the hero and the heroic? In this talk, Professor Fiona Stafford will consider Byron’s Don Juan and Jane Austen’s Persuasion in the context of the Napoleonic wars – and specifically, the experience of aftermath. Her talk will consider the literary texts in relation to the nation’s efforts at memorialising and forgetting. Fiona Stafford is Professor Of English at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Vice principal of Somerville College. She has wide research interests in the Romantic period, the poetry of place, British literature and Jane Austen and is the author of Brief Lives: Jane Austen and the editor of Austen’s Emma for Penguin Classics and Pride and Prejudice for Oxford University Press. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
NOVEMBER
12
NOV 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Lecture: Women and Secret History, 1660-1730. Dr Rebecca Bullard (Reading University) Secret history – a scandalous, iconoclastic, polemical form of history writing – flourished in the partisan political climate of early eighteenthcentury England. What did secret historians find behind closed doors? Invariably, corrupt monarchs and ministers in a literal and metaphorical state of undress, and the still more corrupt and powerful women who ruled over them: infamous mistresses, backstairs politicians, and gossiping spies. This talk will explore the special place that women occupy in the secret history tradition, as both subjects and as writers. From the earliest classical models – including historians of the Roman Empire, Suetonius and Procopius – to the scandal fiction of Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley and Eliza Haywood, secret history both denigrates and celebrates women’s political agency. As it does so, it allows us to explore the literary origins of our own era’s interest in gender, power, and political accountability. Dr Rebecca Bullard is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Reading. Her first book, The Politics of Disclosure: Secret History Narratives, 1674-1725 (2009) examined secret history’s place in early eighteenthcentury political culture. She has published widely on eighteenth-century literature, politics, and women’s writing. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
NOVEMBER
23
NOV 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm recital
Music Recital: A Mozart
Remix Professor David Owen Norris (University of Southampton)
David Owen Norris and friends will present a wonderful programme of Mozart Piano Concertos, re-imagined in 1827 by the virtuoso pianists JB Cramer & JN Hummel. The performance will feature the Stodart Patent Compensating Grand Piano, on loan to Chawton House Library from the University of Southampton, plus music from the violin, flute & cello. Tickets: £18.50; Students/Friends £15 (includes drinks and canapés)
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
december
05
DEC
Christmas Dinner at Chawton House Library Save the date for a Christmas dinner to raise funds for Chawton House Library.
‘At Christmas everybody invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather.’ Mr Elton in Jane Austen’s Emma, first published December 1815 In the bicentenary of the first publication of Jane Austen’s Emma, enjoy a Christmas feast in the magical setting of Chawton House Library, with crackling open fires and oak-panelled rooms decked with Christmas splendor. More information coming soon to our website
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
DECEMBER Conference Marilyn Butler and the War of Ideas Keynote speakers: Professor Jim Chandler (University of Chicago) and Professor Heather Glen (University of Cambridge)
11 DEC 12 DEC
Professor Marilyn Butler (19372014), leading scholar of English literature, and latterly Rector of Exeter College, was the author of paradigm-shifting books and articles, and a patron of Chawton House Library. Butler’s research set up new directions in literary criticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and her editions of women writers from Maria Edgeworth to Mary Wollstonecraft enabled subsequent generations of scholars to access these important texts in newly fruitful ways. In the fortieth anniversary year of the first publication of Butler’s Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975), this conference will include papers that both commemorate her scholarship, and move discussion forward in the twenty-first century. We are grateful for the support of the British Association for Romantic Studies, Cambridge University Press, and the Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies. For full programme details, and a list of speakers, please see our website.
The Library, house and gardens are open to visitors Tuesday to Friday until 30th October. The house opening hours are 2pm to 4.30pm. The gardens are open from 1pm to 4.30pm. The Library itself is freely accessible and open to any reader who would like to use the collections, Monday to Friday, 9.30am to 12.30 pm and 1.30pm to 4.45pm. Please make an appointment with our librarian Dr Darren Bevin (Darren.Bevin@chawtonhouselibrary.org). For educational visits, including bespoke group tours, please contact Sarah Parry (Sarah.Parry@chawtonhouselibrary.org). Our volunteers have free entry to some evening talks. To find out more about volunteering, please visit the website.
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Chawton House Library is a UK registered charity that depends on philanthropy. If you can help us maintain access to our library collection, please donate or become a Friend of Chawton House Library by calling 01420 541010 or visiting the website.
Home to early English women’s writing Chawton House Library, Chawton, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 1SJ T: 01420 541010 E: info@chawtonhouselibrary.org W: www.chawtonhouselibrary.org Registered Charity Number 1026921 Registered Company Number 2851718