Don’t forget to comment on the Jane Austen Birthday Soiree post below to be eligible to win the JASNA-Wisconsin 2012 Jane Austen Calendar!

**********************

For the next seven days I will post a daily want of Austen-related items that I think everyone should ask for this Christmas – [some of these things I already have, some I really want, so I hope my family or Santa is paying close attention…] – great ideas for the Austen-lover in your life and / or add these to your own want-list and I promise you will not be disappointed on Christmas morning!

DAY I: 19 December 2011

A Membership in
North American Friends of Chawton House Library   

A terrific cause supporting early women writers, housed at the home of Jane Austen’s brother Edward Austen Knight…

You also receive their lovely newsletter 4 times a year: The Female Spectator – herewith the latest to grace my mailbox:  Volume 15, No. 4, received this past week: 

Starting with the “Chawton Chronicles” the column from Stephen Lawrence, CEO, is always a great summary of happenings in JA’s world both in and out of the CHL doors: this issue Steve recounts his attendance at JASNA’s AGM in Fort Worth. 

Other essays:

1.  The Diverse Women of Chawton House Library” – by Gillian Dow 

On the portrait of Mary Robinson which CHL has loaned to the National Portrait Gallery’s for the exhibition The First Actresses: Nell Gwynn to Sarah Siddons, along with Robinson’s 1801 Memoirs. 

[Image from The Guardian UK – image copyright CHL; exhibit runs through January 12, 2012]

Dow also references the several lectures offered at CHL, with links to the podcasts of two of them [scroll down for the links]: Dr. Mark Towsey on Elizabeth Rose of Kilravock; and Dr. Debbie Welham on the life of Penelope Aubin.    

2.  “The Contradictory Rhetoric of Needlework in Jane Austen’s Letters and Novels,” by Ellen Kennedy Johnson, author of the dissertation [and forthcoming book? ] Alterations: Gender and Needlework in Late Georgian Arts and Letters.  [available now in dissertation format – you can add this to my want-list]

3. “Fiction in The Hampshire Chronicle, 1772-1829,” by Ruth Facer, author of the lately published Mary Bacon’s World: A Farmer’s Wife in Eighteenth-Century Hampshire.

[you can purchase this book at the CHL online shop here: http://chawton.org/shop/index.html  [I would like this also!]

You can read more about the The Hampshire Chronicle here.

4. “Edward Austen’s Suit” – by Sarah Parry, tells of the portrait recently returned to CHL, and the suit as worn by Edward now on display [though not the same suit as in the portrait] 

 
Edward Austen Knight portrait, with Steve Lawrence, Sandy Lerner,
and Richard Knight [image: JAS Society]

5. “Jane Austen and Chawton House Library: A New Patron’s View” by Deirdre Le Faye. Ms. Le Faye shares her thoughts on new areas of study in Austen’s world.  She wrote of this also here in the Spring 2010 Persuasions On-Line and well-worth the read: http://jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol30no2/lefaye.html

6. “Literary and Literal Landscapes” by Eleanor Marsden, wherein you are reminded to help CHL in whatever way you can…

 7.  “North Meets South: Women’s Travel Narratives at Chawton House Library” by Isabelle Baudino, a Visiting Fellow at CHL in 2010, on her use of the CHLibrary for her research on women travel writers, such as Anne Plumptre.

8. The quarterly column “Faces of Chawton” is in this issue about Ray Moseley, the Information Officer, and the man behind the various PR postings, the facebook and twitter pages, membership databases, and the CHL shop! – a feast of a job!

The Calendar of upcoming events is the only column that leaves me in quite a melancholic mood: so much going on with lectures, balls and gatherings, I am sick at being so far away… 

You can visit Chawton House Library on the web here: http://www.chawton.org

You can shop here:  http://www.shopcreator.com/mall/chawtonhouselibrary/

You can subscribe in the UK here [£30.+]:  http://www.chawton.org/support/friends.html

And in the US here [$50. and up]:  http://www.chawton.org/support/nafchl.html 

Treat yourself [you desesrve it] or a friend and help out CHL at the same time!

Copyright @2011 Jane Austen in Vermont