Events Diary January - June 2015
www.chawtonhouse.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.
JANUARY
29 JAN Image printed with kind permission from the Garrick club
6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Talk: Susannah Cibber’s Marital Melodrama Dr Elaine McGirr, Royal Holloway, University of London
Welcome to this events programme for the first half of 2015. There is something for everyone with walks in the garden, music recitals, and talks on everything from medicine to fashion, war to marital melodrama, actresses and authors from Astell to Austen. 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 open study days on eighteenth-century gardens, digital humanities, and literature and religion.
Prostituted by her husband and disgraced by two public (and graphically illustrated) trials for adultery, Susannah Cibber (1714-1766) refused either to fade away or to be reduced to the ‘actress as whore’ trope. This talk details Susannah Cibber’s canny self-promotion as a tragic heroine – a woman more sinned against than sinning – and incorporates excerpts from her signature roles and contemporary responses to them. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
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.
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawton.net
FEBRUARY
FEBRUARY
12 FEB 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Talk: Conserving a Unique Literary Heritage Caroline Bendix In May 2014, Caroline Bendix (an accredited library conservator with 33 years’ experience) spent two weeks at Chawton House Library conducting an assessment of our books and manuscripts. These include the Sir Charles Grandison manuscript (c.1791, c. 1800) in Jane Austen’s hand, and many rare and indeed unique texts published in the 1600-1830 period. Bendix’s crucial assessment of our collection was made possible thanks to a grant from the Leche Trust in February 2013, alongside generous funding from the North American Friends of Chawton House Library. The survey concluded that, although well cared for now, approximately 75% of the collection has historic damage which needs urgent conservation work. For this evening talk, Caroline Bendix returns to share her passion for conserving real books in a digital age. This is an opportunity to learn about the rare books collection here at Chawton House Library and the steps that can be taken to safeguard its future.
20 FEB 2.00 pm - 4.00 pm
Book Launch, Talk and Signing: Travel and Ageing
in Jane Austen’s Works Maggie Lane and Hazel Jones
Join us to hear two popular authors, who have published extensively on Jane Austen, talk about their work. Maggie Lane will discuss her recently published book Growing Older with Jane Austen, an expert study of the concept of ageing in Jane Austen’s novels. The theme allows for a lively exploration of many of Austen’s most memorable characters, taking in old wives, old maids, merry widows and dowager despots. The book draws on Austen’s six novels, major literary fragments, her own letters and the reminiscences of family members and contemporaries. Austen’s wry approach to the perils and consolations of growing older is bound to strike chords with many.
Entry to this event is free, but donations to our book conservation appeal are very gratefully received.
Hazel Jones will talk about her book Jane Austen’s Journeys, a study of travel in Austen’s works. Jane Austen lived in an exciting age for travel. Improvements to roads and carriages meant that more people than ever were taking journeys for pleasure – to view picturesque scenery, to visit a spa town or the seaside, or to stay with distant relatives. The Austen family was part of this trend and most of Austen’s heroines leave home to travel to a different part of the country at some point in their story. Hazel Jones provides the context for this rage for travel, drawing on a wide range of archives and contemporary printed material as well as on Jane Austen’s own letters and novels.
Tickets: Free (registration is essential)
Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes tea, coffee and cake)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouse.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawton.net
FEBRUARY
MARCH
28 FEB
12 MAR
2.00 - 5.00 pm
Study Day: Experiencing the Georgian Garden A day of talks organised by the University of Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies, focusing on the experience of inhabiting gardens. Georgian men and women frequently wrote of the pleasures of being in a garden, but those pleasures were often defined by gender and associated with particular locations (the flower garden or the park, the walled garden or the shrubbery). From the theories of Thomas Whately and Humphry Repton, to the novels of Jane Austen and the private letters of the Bluestockings, this day of talks will explore what people were told to do in gardens, and what they sometimes did instead. Speakers include Stephen Bending (University of Southampton), author of Green Retreats: women, gardens and eighteenth-century culture, Robert Clark (University of East Anglia), a specialist on Jane Austen and landscape, Kristof Fatsar (Corvinus University of Budapest) a specialist in European garden history, and Michael Symes, author of Mr Hamilton’s Elysium: The gardens of Painshill and editor of the forthcoming edition of Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening. Tickets: £20; Students/Unwaged £15 (includes refreshments)
11.00am – 4.00pm
6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening talk: The Intrepid Mrs Graham: Travel Writer, Intellectual and Woman of Letters Dr Carl Thompson, Nottingham Trent University Maria Graham (or Maria, Lady Callcott, as she was known after her second marriage) was an important early nineteenth-century intellectual, author and taste-maker. By the standards of the day she was incredibly well travelled, and her four travel narratives (about India, Italy, Brazil and Chile) make her the first woman to forge a career as a travel writer, rather than those who published a single travelogue. She also made pioneering contributions to science, art and art history, as well as writing an educational book for children, which remained continuously in print until the 1970s. This talk will outline the diverse strands of Graham’s multidisciplinary career, positioning her in the intellectual, artistic and literary networks of her day, and demonstrating how she represents a significant step forward in the emergence of the ‘woman of letters’. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
Snowdrop Saturday Visit the gardens to enjoy the snowdrops on the south lawn, discover the walled garden and explore the wilderness. Hot drinks and cake will be available to purchase in the Old Kitchen. Tickets: £3; Children £1 (5-15), under fives free
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouse.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawton.net
APRIL
APRIL
20 APR 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Talk: ‘A Fountain of the Richest Poetry’: Anna
Jameson and the ‘Rediscovery’ of Early Christian Art Dr Caroline Palmer, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
13 APR 10.00 am to 5.00 pm
Day Conference: Physical Archives in the Digital Age Keynote speaker: Professor Caroline Franklin, Swansea University The number of digital resources devoted to British women’s writing continues to expand at a staggering rate, with access to digitized textual material by women, and great stores of biographical and bibliographical data about them and their publications, growing by the day. This conference provides an opportunity to explore the transformation of the way we relate to books and physical archives in an increasingly digital age. Speakers will debate the merits and limitations of encountering texts and archives in material and digital forms.
According to John Ruskin, the writer Anna Jameson knew as much about art ‘as the cat’, and yet she has been described as the first professional English art historian. Contemporaries considered her among the ‘great artistic literati’ of the day. This talk will explore the enormous influence of her work on early Italian artists, which influenced painters and writers alike, from Rossetti and Holman Hunt, to Robert Browning and George Eliot. A former associate lecturer in History of Art at Oxford Brookes University, Caroline Palmer currently works in the Western Art Print Room of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
22 APR
The conference is co-hosted by Chawton House Library and the University of Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SCECS). See our website for the call for papers, details of speakers, and exact programme. Tickets: £35; Students/Friends/Unwaged £30
2.00 pm to 4.00 pm
Estate Walk An opportunity to be guided around the historic estate by Alan Bird, Head Gardener. Learn about the plant varieties grown and methods of cultivation. Find out more about the fascinating history of the estate, including the ‘wilderness’ and the ‘ha-ha’, and the additions made by Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen, later Knight, which include the walled kitchen garden, shrubberies and parkland. Enjoy the memorial rose garden and the views across the estate, then warm up in the Old Kitchen with a hot drink and a slice of cake. Stout footwear is essential. Tickets: £10; Students/Unwaged £8 (includes tea, coffee and cake)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouse.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawton.net
APRIL
MAY
23 APR
06 MAY
6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Talk:
Sketches of Bedlam: ‘A Constant Observer’ Observed Professor David Baldwin, University of Southampton The Royal Bethlehem Hospital (also known as ‘Bethlem’ but commonly called ‘Bedlam’) transferred from its Moorfields site to a new location in St Georges Fields, Southwark, in 1815. Eight years later, an anonymous author – ‘A Constant Observer’ – provided vivid though sometimes brief accounts of 140 of its long-resident patients, ostensibly to portray the ‘characteristic traits of insanity’ for a general readership. The publication of ‘Sketches in Bedlam’ gratified public curiosity about the nature and hazards of psychiatric illness but contemporary critics deplored its betrayal of confidentiality and trust in naming patients and describing their symptoms, behaviour and plight in such lurid and sensational terms. In ‘Sketches’, voices of the patients are heard infrequently but the opinions of the sometimes perjorative and amused narrator are expressed rather too freely. Yet within these fragmented descriptions are accounts of symptoms and signs of probably psychiatric conditions that would become formally recognised only later that century, and the character and strength of many patients shines through the murkiness of its cells and galleries. In this talk, Professor David Baldwin, the Head of the University Department of Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton, will consider these descriptions of individual suffering within a framework of early nineteenth-century views and fears of mental illness, and make his own observations on the accounts of the ‘Constant Observer’. He will reflect on how the patients found themselves ‘confined’ in Bethlem, how they interacted with each other and their ‘keepers’, and speculate on what they might say to the doctors of today.
6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm recital
Music Recital La Vittoria: Piano Music to Commemorate the Battle of Waterloo Penelope Cave and Katrina Faulds (University of Southampton) present an entertaining programme of domestic music and readings, reflecting political and social issues from the end of the eighteenth century up to the aftermath of Wellington’s victory at Waterloo in 1815. Music, as played in the English country house, will be performed on a historic pianoforte, on loan from Southampton University, including battles, dances, duets and operatic transcriptions by popular composers of the time. Penelope Cave is an international prize-winning harpsichordist. Her solo CD, From Lisbon to Madrid, received 5 stars from the BBC Music Magazine. Since completing her PhD at the University of Southampton on piano lessons in the English Country House around 1800, she has been invited to implement suitable music at Dyrham Park for the National Trust. Katrina Faulds has completed postgraduate studies on the fortepiano and clavichord. In 2012, she undertook a scholarship at the Attingham Trust Summer School to promote the study of the English country house and its collections. She is currently completing her PhD at the University of Southampton on social dance and dance music at Tatton Park. Tickets: £18.50; Friends / Students £15
Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouse.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawton.net
MAY
MAY 10.00 am to 5.00 pm
15
Day Conference: Dreams, Prophecies and Miracles: Religion & Literature in the Long MAY Eighteenth Century One-day symposium organized by Professor Stephen Bygrave and Dr Laura Davies, University of Southampton Religion and literature in this period may be posed as opposites, one based on faith, the other sceptical, one associated with secular progress, the other with primitivism. The inadequacy of such an opposition becomes clear when we look at how the enlightenment was less atheistic than once thought, and a turn to religion during the Romantic period could be progressive rather than retrograde. This symposium will reflect on the tense interrelation between religion and literature and encourage debate on prophecy, miracles or dreams in texts of the long eighteenth century.
09 MAY
See our website for the call for papers, details of speakers, and exact programme. Tickets: £35; Students/Friends/Unwaged £30
2.00 pm – 4.00 pm
Afternoon talk and tea: the Essence of a Georgian Gentleman Dr David Allen, Independent Scholar The dining room at Chawton House Library is home to a fine portrait of Jane Austen’s brother Edward. A souvenir of the Grand Tour, it epitomises the finery and outward displays of affluence and respectability required of the Georgian gentleman. This lecture explores the life of this newly gentrified class in the period 1714 to 1830, through a hands-on display of artefacts including porcelain, domestic silver, costume and the written word. It takes as its starting point Squire John Custance of Norfolk and his friend, the diarist Parson James Woodforde, and looks at the domestic life of the Georgian gentry, from the contents of their pockets to the food on their tables. The display includes a signed first edition of The Experienced English Housekeeper by the writer and philanthropist Elizabeth Raffald, The Complete Servant by Samuel and Sarah Adams as well as bound volumes of Le Beau Monde and Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, both of which were must-have magazines for Regency ladies. There will be a chance to see Edward Austen, later Knight’s journal, and his silk suit, recently restored through a number of generous donations. Tickets: £15; Students/Friends £12 (includes tea, coffee and cake)
6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening Talk: Meeting
Mary Astell (1666-1731) Professor Ruth Perry, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
20
MAY
Ruth Perry, the Ann Fetter Friedlaender Professor of Humanities at MIT and past president of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, is known for her scholarship on eighteenthcentury women and their writing. She encountered Mary Astell’s extraordinarily powerful feminist texts from 1694 and 1695 when writing her PhD dissertation long ago and vowed to learn more about this remarkable woman. Her 1986 biography of Astell put this early feminist on the intellectual map, and excerpts from Astell’s writing are now included in the Norton Anthology of English Literature. This talk will be an introduction to Astell, her writings and her influence, and of a young scholar’s attempts to tell her story. It will include a chance to see Chawton House Library’s first editions of Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the advancement of their true and greatest interest (1794) and Some Reflections upon Marriage (1700). Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouse.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawton.net
MAY
JUNE 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening talk and book signing: Waiting for Waterloo: the rollercoaster year Jenny Uglow OBE
26 MAY 6.30 pm drinks reception for 7.00 pm talk
Evening talk: A window on the world: the phenomenon of
the Lady’s Magazine (1770-1818) Dr Jennie Batchelor, Dr Koenraad Claes and Dr Jenny DiPlacidi, University of Kent
From its inauspicious first appearance in August 1770 to the beginning of its new series in 1818, the Lady’s Magazine; or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex presented its readers with a uniquely panoramic view of the world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century life, literature and the arts and sciences. For a modest price, readers were provided with a monthly feast of short stories and serialised fiction, poetry, essays on history, science, politics and travel, advice for wives and mothers, fashion reports, recipes, accounts of trials and biographies of famous historical and contemporary figures, domestic and foreign news reports, as well as elegant engravings, fashion plates, embroidery patterns and song sheets. The magazine launched the literary careers of writers such as local Alresford author Mary Russell Mitford and provided publication opportunities for hundreds of other female and also male amateur writers who filled its monthly pages for over 60 years. This talk will shed light on the phenomenal popularity and importance of a title that Charlotte Brontë wished with all her ‘heart’ she ‘had been born in time to contribute to’. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50 (includes drinks and canapés)
Jenny Uglow’s latest book, In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon’s Wars, 1793-1815, is a fascinating crowd biography of the experience of different people from all classes and ages – a view of the home front – through twenty years of war. In this talk, commemorating the bicentenary of the momentous Battle of Waterloo, fought in June 1815, Jenny discusses the lead up to this historical event, a tumultuous year which brought the decades of conflict to a definitive close. Tickets: £11; Students/Friends £8.50
04 JUN
Save the Date… More details coming soon! Please check our website for the latest information. 6-7 June
Open House and Gardens: Chawton village opens its gardens for the
weekend. Enjoy free access to the Chawton House Library gardens as part of this special event. The café will be open selling refreshments and visitors can also pay an admission fee to explore the house. 20-28 June
Jane Austen Regency Week: daily tours of the house and a special talk
about Regency Dress on 24th June with Eleanor Houghton, eighteenthcentury scholar and couture milliner. 9-10 July
Conference: actress as author – Nell Gwyn to Ellen Terry
A two-day interdisciplinary conference exploring how the stage was a place where women were listened to and respected, investing actresses with authority and giving them unprecedented freedom to speak out. 16 July
Evening talk and piano recital: 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt: We commemorate this historic event with a talk from
Professor Anne Curry and a piano recital by Professor David Owen Norris.
To book: Visit www.chawtonhouse.org
Call 01420 541010 Email info@chawton.net
Chawton House Library 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@chawton.net). For educational visits, including bespoke group tours, please contact Sarah Parry (Sarah.Parry@chawton.net). Chawton House Library is also available for weddings (Corrine.Saint@chawton.net), corporate, private hire and filming (Ray.Moseley@chawton.net). Please get in touch with the relevant contact, or see online for details. Our volunteers have free entry to some evening talks. To find out more about volunteering, please visit the website. Tickets are available to buy online at www.chawtonhouse.org or by calling 01420 541010. 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@chawton.net W: www.chawtonhouse.org Registered Charity Number 1026921 Registered Company Number 2851718