Chawton House Library ~ What’s On ~
January - June 2017
www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Visiting the House and Gardens Chawton House Library conserves a unique collection of women’s writing (1600-1830) within the Elizabethan manor house once owned by Jane Austen’s brother Edward.
Exhibitions Access to these exhibitions is included in the price of admission
The Library, house and grounds are open to the public from 20 March to 27 October 2017 on Monday to Friday 12.00 to 4.30pm and Sundays/ Bank Holidays 11.00 am to 5.00 pm. House & Gardens Gardens Only Admission fees are: £8.00 £4.00 Adult £4.00 £2.00 Child (6-16)
Naming, Shaming, Reclaiming: The ‘incomparable’ Eliza Haywood 20 March to 4 June 2017
This events programme is sponsored by Routledge Historical Resources: History of Feminism. Discover the fascinating global history of feminism across the long nineteenth century through primary and secondary sources and images. History of Feminism is a carefully curated online resource of materials collated from the Taylor and Francis archives with the help of academic editor Ann Heilmann.
As the first exhibition to focus solely on the author Eliza Haywood (c.1693-1756), this exhibition will reconstruct her immensely productive career, using rare early editions of her work currently held in our Library collection.
Created with the student and researcher in mind, this interdisciplinary resource features more than 1,000 chapters of primary source materials available in electronic format for the first time including content from the Chawton House Library collection. This is accompanied by over 100 journal articles and 1,000 chapters of secondary content. 16 newly commissioned essays from experts in the field provide thematic overviews that help to provide context to the sources, whilst an image gallery helps to bring this resource to life. The resource includes features to make research as easy as possible. These include the ability to search by notable figure, period, region or subject to help users find exactly what they want. Each article can also be cited or shared at the click of a button making the research process as simple as possible.
Explore History of Feminism - sign up for a free trial today! Discover more about the history of feminism today with a free trial for your institution. www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Fickle Fortunes: Jane Austen and Germaine de Staël 12 June to 24 September 2017 July 1817 saw the deaths of Austen and Germaine de Staël. This exhibition shows how, over the two centuries since, the relative reputations of these two writers have re-aligned in ways that would have astonished their contemporaries. Please see our website for further details
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Tuesday 17 January
Thursday 2 February
5.00 to 7.00pm
Evening Orchard Wassail Join us for this magical night of merrymaking following the ancient tradition of the Orchard Wassail! Held on Old Twelfth Night (17 January according to the old Julian calendar rather than 5-6 January in our modern Gregorian calendar) this was the practice, in cider-producing regions of England, of visiting orchards to recite incantations and sing to the trees to promote a good harvest for the coming year. There will be a brief talk about the history of the tradition, followed by a torch-lit procession to the orchard in the Walled Garden, where there will be singing and toasting around the Bramley tree. Guests can warm up in the Old Kitchen with soup and rolls to round off the evening. Tickets: £10; Children (6-16) £5 (includes soup, roll and drink)
6.30pm drinks reception for 7pm talk
Evening Talk ‘Life is a Magic Lanthorn’: The Lives of Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi Dr Sophie Coulombeau (Cardiff University) Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi (1741-1821), whose sparkling wit impressed Dr Johnson and earned her a place at the heart of London’s fashionable literati, was also a Welsh child heiress, longsuffering wife and mother, political campaigner, passionate lover, woman of scandal, seasoned traveller, literary celebrity, antiquarian, patron, and a prophet. Despite her relative obscurity today, she was one of the most innovative, successful and notorious writers at work in eighteenth-century and Romantic Britain. This talks gives an overview of Hester Thrale Piozzi’s biographical and literary lives. Sophie Coulombeau is a lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University, a novelist, and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker (2014). Her forthcoming project, planned with Dr. Elizabeth Edwards (University of Wales), aims to restore Thrale Piozzi to her rightful place at the forefront of eighteenth-century and Romantic literary scholarship. Tickets: £11; Students / Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Sunday 12 February
Saturday 25 February
11am to 5pm
Chawton House Library Snowdrop Sunday Visit the gardens to enjoy the snowdrops on the south lawn and in the wilderness, discover the walled garden and explore the grounds. Refreshments will be available for purchase in the tearoom. Tickets: £4; Children (Under 16) Free Tickets to the house will be available for the additional admission price of £4
Sunday 19 February 11am to 5pm
National Garden Scheme Snowdrop Day Chawton House Library has recently joined the National Gardens Scheme (NGS). This inspiring programme organises the opening of outstanding gardens around the country to raise funds for charity and we are delighted to become involved. Entry to the gardens will be £4 (children under 16 go free) and all funds will go to a range of beneficiaries selected by NGS including Macmillan Cancer Support and Marie Curie among others. Refreshments will be available for purchase in the tearoom. Tickets: £4; Children (Under 16) Free Tickets to the house will be available for the additional admission price of £4
10am to 4pm
Conference Writing Art: Women Writers as Art Critics in the Long Eighteenth Century Long thought to be the domain of wealthy men, art criticism and connoisseurship underwent a transformation in the late Georgian period. This one-day conference focuses on women writers as art critics in the late Georgian and early Victorian period. Bringing together leading art historians and literary scholars on women’s writing and art criticism, speakers will draw on travel writing and private letters, on diaries and on novels by major English and French authors. This conference is held in conjunction with the National Gallery, London – which hosts, on the 10th November 2017, a conference on women as critics of Old Master paintings in the Victorian period – and the Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Speakers include: Dr Susanna Avery-Quash (National Gallery, London), Dr Stephen Lloyd (Knowsley Hall), Dr Emma Barker (Open University), Dr Isabelle Baudino (Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon), Professor Lyndsay Smith (Sussex), Dr Carl Thompson (St Mary’s, Twickenham). Funding for this conference is provided by Chawton House Library, the Women’s History Network, and the Southampton Centre for EighteenthCentury Studies. Tickets: £35; Students / Friends £30 (includes lunch and refreshments)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Thursday 2 March
Saturday 11 March
6.30pm drinks reception for 7pm talk
2pm to 5pm
Evening Talk
Afternoon Talks: Re-thinking Sanditon
Town and Garden in Beatrix Potter’s Imaginative World Professor Judith W. Page (University of Florida)
‘Such an unfinished fragment cannot be presented to the public.’ James Edward Austen-Leigh
Beatrix Potter is best known as the author of the Peter Rabbit tales, first published at the beginning of the twentieth century, books that most of us either encountered as children or as adults reading to children. Later in life, Potter became a farmer, environmentalist, and land owner in the Lake District. She wrote in a letter: ‘I do not remember a time when I did not try to invent pictures and make for myself a fairyland amongst the wild flowers, the animals, fungi, mosses, woods and streams, all the thousand objects of the countryside – that pleasant, unchanging world of realism and romance...’ In this talk, Professor Judith W. Page will consider how Potter’s children’s books reveal her commitment to preserving and defending the values that she associated with rural England.
On March 18th, 1817, 4 months before her death, Jane Austen laid down her pen, leaving 12 chapters of an unfinished manuscript, which came to be known as Sanditon. As her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, wrote in his 1871 memoir, ‘it is certain that the mine at which she had so long laboured was not worked out, and that she was still diligently employed in collecting fresh materials from it.’ He suggested that had Austen lived to complete the work, Sanditon’s characters ‘might have grown into as mature an individuality of character, and have taken as permanent a place amongst our familiar acquaintance, as Mr. Bennet, or John Thorp, Mary Musgrove, or Aunt Norris herself.’ The novel remained unpublished in full until 1925.
Judith W. Page, a former Chawton House Library Visiting Fellow, is Professor of English at the University of Florida. She has written several books, including Women, Literature, and the Domesticated Landscape: England’s Disciples of Flora, 1780-1870 (2011) and Wordsworth and the Cultivation of Women (1994). Her most recent book is Disciples of Flora: Gardens in History and Culture, (2015, edited with Victoria Pagán and Brigitte Weltman-Aron). Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Our Sanditon afternoon will consider this unfinished and understudied novel 200 years after its composition. In addition to a rehearsed reading of sections of the novel, our three speakers will also consider health, financial speculation, and language and style in the novel. Speakers include: Dr Anne Toner (Trinity College Cambridge), Professor Michael Biddis (University of Reading), Dr Sarah Comyn (University College Dublin). Tickets: £18.50; Students / Friends £15
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Thursday 16 March
Thursday 23 March
6.30pm drinks reception for 7pm performance
Evening Recital Jane’s History: A Theatrical Concert of Pincushion Wit
6.30pm drinks reception for 7pm talk
Evening Talk ‘Such classic and humanizing amusements’: private theatricals in Jane Austen’s world Professor Gillian Russell (University of Melbourne) The preeminent account in English fiction of preparations for a private theatrical performance is Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. In that novel, Austen was exploring a trend of which she had direct experience and which had widespread popularity among the gentry and aristocratic class in the British Isles and beyond. In this talk, Professor Gillian Russell will contextualise Austen’s representation of the ‘epidemic of acting’ in late Georgian culture in relation to how other women writers addressed this theme. Theatricals have the potential to usurp attics and bedrooms and, as in Mansfield Park, the core of the patriarch’s domain. This talk will show how this disruptive aspect of Mansfield Park is illuminated by the neglected context of private theatricals in contemporary Georgian Ireland. Gillian Russell is an honorary fellow at the University of Melbourne, and the Marilyn Butler Visiting Fellow at Chawton House Library for 2016-2017. She has published widely on Irish and British literature, and culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing on theatre, war, sociability, and gender, including her book Women, Sociability and Theatre in Late Georgian London (2007). Tickets: £11; Students / Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
A lively two-part programme, featuring renowned sopranos Catherine Bott and Emily Gray, and fortepianist Vivian Montgomery, and encompassing John Howell Morrison’s miniature opera setting of Jane Austen’s A History of England alongside vocal works by and about women in the Georgian era. Austen’s History of England, written when she was just 16 years old, was a gleeful parody of Oliver Goldsmith’s History of England. In this recital, Jane’s History is a hilarious melodrama, staged all around the audience with two battling Janes, an ‘MC’, a lamenting chorus, accompanied by fortepiano, and enhanced by projected images. The program’s second half of entertaining songs paints a telling picture of women’s inner lives and humour from the time and culture of Jane Austen, 200 years after her death. Catherine Bott, soprano, is recognized as a virtuoso of early music. A Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Catherine also has a Sunday-night programme on Classic FM, Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Classical Music. Vivian Montgomery is an award-winning harpsichordist and fortepianist on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She resides in Boston where she is founder of the new baroque orchestra, Eudaimonia, A Purposeful Period Band. John Howell Morrison, composer, is a native of North Carolina and has worked in the composition and theory faculty of the Longy School of Music since 2003. John’s music appears on compact disc on Arizona University Recordings and Ten Thousand Lakes. Tickets: £18.50; Students/Friends £15 (includes drinks and canapés)
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Wednesday 12 April
Sunday 23 April and Sunday 21 May
10am to 12pm
2pm
Children’s Gardening Workshop (ages 5-11)
Garden Tour
As part of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) National Gardening Week, we invite children to take part in gardening activities, including planting a small pot to take away. Price includes drink and biscuit for child. Parents must remain on site during the event but can stay in the tearoom if they wish. Refreshments will be available for purchase.
Join Garden Manager Andrew Bentley for a guided tour of the gardens. Hear about the history of the grounds, including period features, such as the ‘wilderness’ and ‘ha-ha’, along with the Walled Kitchen Garden built by Jane Austen’s brother Edward. The walking tour will also take in recent additions such as the Elizabeth Blackwell Herb Garden, and plans for the future.
Tickets: £6
Tickets: Standard admission plus £1 (children under 16 go free)
Sunday 16 April
Sunday 7 May and Friday 2 June 8.30am walk, followed by 10am brunch
Estate Rambles
11am to 5pm
Easter Children’s Orienteering Trail Enjoy the Easter weekend at Chawton House Library with a special orienteering trail. Explore our Wilderness to find the 10 animal markers using the map. Write down what animal silhouettes you find. If your child gets all 10, you can treat them to free cake in the tearoom!
Explore the Chawton House Library estate in the company of our Garden Manager, Andrew Bentley. Enjoy the many garden features and take in the stunning views with shire horses and sheep grazing across tranquil parkland. Then relax in the Old Kitchen with a hearty full English breakfast. Please note that we will go ahead whatever the weather so stout footwear and outdoor clothing is essential! Tickets: £15; Children £7.50 (includes full English cooked breakfast – please inform us of any dietary requirements when booking).
Tickets: standard admission prices + £1 for orienteering map
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Thursday 18 May
Sunday 28 May
6.30pm drinks reception for 7pm talk
Evening Talk What is a Literary Coterie and Why Does It Matter Professor Betty Schellenberg (Simon Fraser University) It has often been assumed that manuscript-circulating coterie groups disappeared under the tidal wave of print materials that flooded eighteenthcentury Britain. In fact, recent arguments have questioned whether ‘the coterie’ is a meaningful concept at all. To challenge these generalisations, Professor Betty Schellenberg will tell the stories of several widely divergent literary coteries that flourished in the middle of the eighteenth century – whether centred in a country house, a suburban grotto, an ornamental farm, a London mansion, or the virtual space of handwritten letters. The distinctive characteristics of these tight-knit networks in fact gave rise to some of the most ‘modern’ features of eighteenth-century print publication. Betty Schellenberg is a Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, and the British Association for Romantic Studies Visiting Fellow for 201617. Her interest in the relationship between literature circulating in script and print publications informs her most recent book on coteries. Other publications include The Professionalization of Women Writers in EighteenthCentury Britain (2005), and Reconsidering the Bluestockings (2003, co-edited with Nicole Pohl). Tickets: £11; Students / Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
11am to 5pm
National Gardens Scheme Festival Weekend & 90th Anniversary Chawton House Library has recently joined the National Gardens Scheme (NGS). This inspiring programme organises the opening of outstanding gardens around the country to raise funds for charity and we are delighted to become involved. Entry to the gardens will be £4 (children under 16 go free) and all funds will go to a range of beneficiaries selected by NGS including Macmillan Cancer Support and Marie Curie among others. Refreshments will be available for purchase in the tearoom. Tickets: £4; Children (Under 16) Free Tickets to the house will be available for the additional admission price of £4
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 June
Tuesday 20 and Thursday 22 June
11am to 5pm
Chawton Village Open Gardens Weekend Join us for this biennial event when Chawton Village opens its gardens to raise funds for village projects. Enjoy exploring the gardens of Chawton House Library and the Jane Austen’s House Museum as well as many other charming gardens – and don’t forget to find the scarecrows in our ‘wilderness’! Entry to the gardens is included in the general admission for Chawton Village Open Gardens. Tickets to the house will be available for the additional admission price of £4. Refreshments will be available in the Old Kitchen tearoom.
Saturday 17 to Sunday 25 June Sunday 18 June 11am
Meet the Chawton House Library Shires The Library, House and Gardens will be open as usual Monday to Friday 12pm to 4.30pm and on Sunday 11am to 5pm during Regency Week, with refreshments available for purchase in the Old Kitchen tearoom. There will also be the following activities:
Come and meet our magnificent shire horses on Chawton Village Green (Free)
Sunday 18 June 2.30pm
Garden Tour and Cream Tea Tickets: £10; Child (under 16) £7.00
Monday 19, Wednesday 21, Friday 23 June 10.30am
Curator’s Tour and Cream Tea
10.30am-12pm
12.30pm-2pm
Embroidery workshops Back by popular demand, join us for this unique opportunity to get hands on with history and learn how to embroider a handkerchief using rare eighteenth-century patterns from the long-running monthly Lady’s Magazine (1770-1832). Led by Royal School of Needlework graduate Charlotte Bailey, you will learn, or be given opportunities to develop, historical needlework skills by working on one or two motifs using three simple stitches (stem, satin and French knot). All materials as provided, and the work you begin in the workshop can be completed at home. Charlotte Bailey is a freelance hand-embroidery artist (convinced she was born in the wrong time period!) with a passion for historical technique combined with contemporary application. She graduated from the Royal School of Needlework where she also had the privilege to work on the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress. During her time working at prestigious London-based ateliers Hand and Lock she also worked on fashion commissions from Louis Vuitton and Mary Katrantzou. Tickets: £25 including materials
Join a special tour of the Fickle Fortunes Exhibition £15; Child (under 16) £8.50
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawtonhouselibrary.org
Wednesday 21 June This events programme is sponsored by Routledge Historical Resources: History of Feminism.
21 JUN
Discover the fascinating global history of feminism across the long nineteenth century through primary and secondary sources and images. History of Feminism is a carefully curated online resource of materials collated from the Taylor and Francis archives with the help of academic editor Ann Heilmann.
Comic Muse: How Jane Austen loved the theatre and why she works in Hollywood Dr Paula Byrne
Created with the student and researcher in mind, this interdisciplinary resource features more than 1,000 chapters of primary source materials available in electronic format for the first time including content from the Chawton Frances Brooke (1724-1789) House Library collection. This is accompanied by over 100 journal articles and 1,000 chapters of secondary content. 16 newly commissioned essays from experts in the field provide thematic overviews that help to provide context to the sources, whilst an image gallery helps to bring this resource to life.
In this talk, Dr Paula Byrne, author of the most recent biography of Jane Austen, The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things (2013), will explore Austen’s lifelong love of the theatre, and her continuing popularity on stage and screen today.
The resource includes features to make research as easy as possible. These include the ability to search by notable figure, period, region or subject to help users find exactly what they want. Each article can also be cited or shared at the click of a button making the research process as simple as possible.
6.30pm drinks reception for 7pm talk
Evening Talk
Paula Byrne is an author and biographer. Her first book was Jane Austen and the Theatre (2002), and since then she has published bestselling biographies of Austen (2013), Evelyn Waugh (2009), and Mary Robinson (2005), and the tie-in book to the award-winning movie, Belle, the true story of the daughter of a slave who was brought up by the Lord Chief Justice of England in the years leading up to Abolition. Tickets: £11; Students / Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouselibrary.org
Explore History of Feminism - sign up for a free trial today! Discover more about the history of feminism today with a free trial for your institution. www.routledgehistoricalresources.com/feminism
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 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