Online Auction to
Benefit Chawton House
 Juliet McMaster, a lifelong Jane Austen scholar and highly regarded illustrator, is selling her original artwork from The Beautifull Cassandra at public auction to benefit Chawton House, an Austen family property previously owned by Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen Knight. Chawton House now operates as a museum, library, and study center for early women’s writing (1630-19th c.). McMaster, known familiarly to friends and fans alike simply as Juliet, has created her lively illustrations in colored inks. The collection consists of twenty-one original illustrations plus one reproduction that accompany the short juvenilia story, written by Austen when she was about thirteen. The illustrations are 12 by 9 inches, larger than the images in the book. One, the tortoise hauling the carriage up Hampstead Hill, is 12 by 18 inches. The art pieces are mounted on sturdy illustration board. All illustrations will be auctioned together as one set – we felt it incumbent upon us to keep them together. Each will be signed by Juliet with her customary “Juliet” signature.  ******************** The online auction begins October 10, 2026, at noon Eastern time (UTC-5) and will be administered by the North American Friends of Chawton House (NAFCH), a U.S. non-profit dedicated to supporting Chawton House and its mission. All auction proceeds go to Chawton House. You can see all the details and all the illustrations on the NAFCH website here: https://www.nafch.org/bcass-art All bids will be made online at the 32auctions website: www.32auctions.com/NAFCH [You must first log in / create an account to bid] Bidding closes on Saturday, October 31, 2026, at 5 p.m. Eastern time(UTC-5) *****************  Juliet at work in 1993 ABOUT THE ARTIST: Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Alberta, a founding member of JASNA, and a frequent presenter at JASNA AGMs, Juliet is the author of Jane Austen on Love and Jane Austen, Young Author, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen and The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf. She has authored books on Thackeray, Trollope, and Dickens, as well. In 1994, she founded Juvenilia Press, which publishes the early writings of well-known authors.  |
ABOUT THE BOOK: The origins of the illustrated children’s book The Beautifull Cassandra go back to the 1987 AGM in New York City on the topic “The Juvenilia and Lady Susan.” There, Juliet says, she was “first smitten with Jane Austen’s cheeky tale about the girl Cassandra, who falls in love with a bonnet.” She conceived the idea of making it into a picture book for children, with the characters turned into small animals.* J. David (Jack) Grey, the AGM co-convener, encouraged her pursuit. “He loved the juvenilia,” Juliet recalls. “He used to say that two people produced world-class art before they reached adulthood: Jane Austen and Mozart. (You will know that I agree with him!).” Grey also served as an early reader. “Characteristically, he turned to his five-year-old niece and read her the story and showed her the pictures. What was her verdict? She said, ‘I want a bonnet!’ I couldn’t have had a more authoritative response.” The publisher, Sono Nis Press of Victoria, Canada, couriered a box of freshly printed copies to Lake Louise, Canada, where Juliet was co-convener of the 1993 JASNA AGM. Book sales were brisk there and afterward. And its history didn’t end there: The Beautifull Cassandra was later set to music for flute and Celtic harp by Joanne Forman. This treatment inspired an original children’s ballet choreographed by Amber Vasquez, director of the Taos, NM, youth ballet, and performed by children in Taos in 2007 and 2008. A plenary session at the 2008 Chicago AGM, “The Beautifull Cassandra: The Pictures, the Music, the Dance,” featured Juliet’s illustrations and voice-over, Forman’s music performed live with still photos from Vasquez’s ballet. Detailed information on the three versions of The Beautifull Cassandra can be found online at: https://jasna.org/publications/cassandra/toc.htm Juliet notes that her concentrated work on Austen’s juvenilia taught her how much could be learned from an author’s early writings, and so she “took the idea to the classroom and founded the Juvenilia Press in order to involve students in hands-on experience in textual editing, annotation, and so on.” This effort “has introduced dozens of students, all over the world, to the refinements of scholarly editing.” Juvenilia Press took over publication of The Beautifull Cassandra when the Sono Nis Press’s warehouse burned, destroying the book plates and all remaining inventory. The Lake Louise AGM also brought forth another illustrated work, a Persuasion spin-off called His Cunning or Hers. The epistolary novel, which pertained to the clandestine relations between Mrs. Clay and William Elliot, was written by June Menzies and illustrated by Juliet. Juliet donated her illustrations from that novel to benefit Chawton House. Other sets of her illustrations have been sold to raise money for the Juvenilia Press.  We are pleased to say that Juliet will be attending and presenting at the Tucson JASNA AGM where the online auction will reach its conclusion. She may be found at her Juvenilia Press table in the Emporium or at the NAFCH tables just outside the Emporium to talk about the illustrations and how they came to be. The North American Friends of Chawton House are very grateful to Juliet for her generous gift of her original illustrations to benefit Chawton House. Thank you to all the bidders, as you are helping to support Chawton House. Click here for more information on their mission. Supporters in the USA and Canada can donate to Chawton House through North American Friends of Chawton House (NAFCH), a public 501(c)(3) non-profit. We wish you luck in bidding on these glorious McMaster illustrations!  October 10, 2026, 12 pm EDT – October 31, 2026, 5 pm EDT **********************  The “Belly-ache” gargoyle at the Washington National Cathedral *A little known fun fact about Juliet is that while in graduate school, she submitted a design for one of the gargoyles for the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Her entry, along with 111 others, was accepted, and her very own gargoyle sits there proudly today: “The Belly-ache” – you can read all about it here. [Images: ©Juvenilia Press and are not to be reproduced or transmitted in any form.] |
   North American Friends of Chawton House Board of Directors Linda Troost, President Erna Arnesen, Deborah Barnum, Pam Braak, Isobel Grundy, Collins Hemingway, Joy Prevost, Laura Rocklyn, Carole Stokes, Jeanne Talbot, Catherine Windels |
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North American Friends of Chawton House
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