Jane Austen was a working woman and a determined professional writer. This illustrated talk will explore Austen’s involvement in the business of publishing novels during a time of rampant financial instability. The Austen family were active participants in both war and finance and these two sectors intertwined in the story of Jane Austen’s writing and publishing.
Sunday, 15 September 2019, 2-4 pm Temple Sinai, 500 Swift St., South Burlington
(Corner of Swift and Dorset)
Liz Philosophos Cooper is the President of JASNA. Liz is a second-generation JASNA member who fell in love with Austen’s work as a high school student. A member since 1992, she has actively participated in local JASNA activities, served as JASNA’s Vice-President for Regions from 2013-2018, and was Regional Coordinator of Wisconsin prior to that. A popular speaker, she is a contributing writer to Jane Austen’s Regency World and co-edits the A Year with Jane Austen calendar. Her talk from the Washington DC JASNA Annual General Meeting, “The Apothecary and the Physician: Emma’s Mr. Perry” was published in Persuasions 38.
Liz holds a BA (Communication Arts) from the University of Wisconsin. She worked in marketing before taking time off to raise four sons. Literature has always been a part of Liz’s life: she began a Village book group in 1986 that is still going strong, and a Junior Great Books reading program at the local elementary school. She has been an active volunteer in the community, including serving as President of the Village of Shorewood Hills Foundation for many years.
~ Free & open to the public ~ Light refreshments served ~
Upcoming meeting December 8, Annual Birthday Tea: “What did she say? – Just what she ought…”: Proposals in Jane Austen with Hope Greenberg & Deb Barnum (and film clips!). Plus, dancing with Val Medve and the Burlington Country Dancers, and a Full English Tea at the Essex Resort and Spa. Click here for the Dec Tea 2019-Reservation form-NEW: Deadline for registering and payment is September 20, 2019.
JASNA offers an annual tour of Jane Austen’s England, this past summer one that focused on Persuasion, with trips to Portsmouth, Lyme Regis, and Bath (you can see the itinerary here: http://www.jasna.org/conferences-events/tour/itinerary/] and pine over the fact you missed it! (I still am!) Next year’s tour will again be in July, details not yet announced, but expecting it will have some sort of Gothic theme to celebrate Northanger Abbey. I highly recommend these tours, as they bring JASNA members from all over together, as well as help to support JASNA.
But sometimes you cannot go when these JASNA tours are offered, or it sells out before you register, or your best friend can’t go when you can … We know there are all manner of tours evoking Jane Austen – I have created my own tours on a few occasions to try to see the salient spots; and I’ve developed friendships in England with people happy to tour me around (thank you Tony Grant and Ron Dunning!!); and I’ve recommended to friends where they should go if they are touring on their own. The only drawback of such a plan is that there are places to see, people to meet, that only an organized tour can arrange for you – this is why every year I say “this is the year I will do the JASNA tour” – and every year something gets in the way. So I look to see what other tours are available, and right now I find that friends of mine who run a tour company out of Saratoga Springs, are offering an “English Heritage Tour with Jane Austen” next year, September 3-12, 2019.
I recently traveled with them this past summer to Switzerland – it was a terrific adventure (or “edventure” as they call their company), with a great group of fellow travelers; so I can highly recommend them! This Jane Austen tour was offered a few years ago with a different itinerary – I could not go then and I cannot go on this one either, much to my dismay and disappointment. But I did want to share the details with you in hopes YOU can go… the joy of this trip being not only the sites of Jane Austen’s England, but also that it is being led by David Shapard, the knowledgable and engaging author of the annotated editions of all six of Austen’s novels – David knows his Jane Austen!
Here are the details:
“English Heritage Tour with Jane Austen”
This tour uses the lens of one of England’s greatest writers to explore some of the finest examples of English heritage. These include the gorgeous eighteenth century city of Bath as well as other historic towns and villages, the cathedrals and churches of traditional England, the Royal navy, and the grand houses and gardens of the gentry and aristocracy. She knew all these places and institutions well and made them the principal settings for her novels and we will follow in her footsteps to get to know them ourselves.
Tour highlights:
—Begin with a two-night stay in Bath, the leading spa in England in the 18th century, known for its natural hot springs and Georgian architecture.
—Explore the city of Lacock, a 15th century village that retains its design and look of many centuries ago and served as the setting for a small town in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice.
—Travel to Winchester for a five-night stay. On the way, visit Stourhead, whose grounds are perhaps the finest examples of the new style of irregular landscaping that emerged in England in the18th century. A renowned temple on the ground was used for the proposal scene in the 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice. —In Winchester we will visit its cathedral, and from there explore the Austen family cottages and estates in Chawton and Steventon. In what is now the Jane Austen House Museum, Austen composed Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.
—Explore the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard for harbor tours and a close look at the celebrated warships and seamen of Britain’s naval history.
—Visit Salisbury with its stunning cathedral and Mompesson House, a Queen Anne house used for the film Sense and Sensibility.
Meals: Daily Breakfast, 3 lunches, 2 dinners
Tour Leader: In keeping with Edventure’s mission of “Adventure Travel That Educates,” the trip will be led by Dr. Shapard, a historian and scholar. David is the author of The Annotated Pride and Prejudice as well as annotated versions of Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Emma. He has given numerous talks about Jane Austen to Austen societies and other groups and has undertaken several trips to England to study gardens, estates, and other sites on the tour. Travelers will benefit from his vast knowledge of the areas we will visit as well as his enthusiasm and his expertise in English history.
Price: $3260 land only double occupancy Single supplement: $799
For a complete itinerary contact: goedventures [at] gmail.com
You are Cordially Invited to JASNA-Vermont’s June Meeting
with
JASNA President Claire Bellanti*
“‘You Can Get a Parasol at Whitby’s:’
Circulating Libraries in Jane Austen’s Time”
Sunday, 4 June 2017, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Morgan Room, Aiken Hall, 83 Summit Street Champlain College,
Burlington VT**
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Join us for an illustrated talk about an 18th century social institution that was very important to Jane Austen in her own life and her fiction, the Circulating Library. Claire will present its history and then, with references to Austen’s novels and letters, show how central such libraries were in the reading and sharing of books in Regency England.
*Claire Bellanti holds an M.A. in History (UNLV) and an M.B.A (UCLA). She is retired from a 35 year career as a library professional at UCLA. She is currently President of the Jane Austen Society of North America, and has served in other capacities on the Board of JASNA SW and the Board of JASNA since 1994. She has written and lectured frequently about the UCLA Sadleir Collection of 19th Century Literature, including the Jane Austen contents and Silver Fork portions of the collection.
~ Free & open to the public ~ ~ Light refreshments served ~
The first order of business today, on this 241st birthday of Jane Austen, is the annual publication of JASNA’s Persuasions On-Line Vol. 37, No. 1 (Winter 2016). Click here for the Table of Contents to yet another inspiring collection of essays, some from the 2016 AGM in Washington DC on EMMA AT 200, “NO ONE BUT HERSELF” – and other “Miscellany” – all about Jane Austen…and perfect winter reading material…
Here are the essays: (you might especially notice Gillian Dow’s essay on the Emma exhibition at Chawton House Library this year (website under redevelopment til Christmas) – for those of you who could not attend, this is the next best thing to being there!)
Let’s look at what Austen’s father wrote about her arrival on December 16, 1775:
You have doubtless been for some time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age grown such bad reckoners but so it was, for Cassy certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago: however last night the time came, and without a great deal of warning, everything was soon happily over. We have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion. She is to be Jenny, and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy. Your sister thank God is pure well after it, and send her love to you and my brother, not forgetting James and Philly…
[Letter from Mr. Austen to his sister Philadelphia Walter, December 17, 1775, as quoted from Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen, A Family Record, Cambridge, 2004, p.27.]
Happy Birthday Miss Austen! – you continue to inspire, intrigue, and offer insights like no other!
UPDATE #1: new images from the exhibition have been added!
Folger Exhibit Brochure
The Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library is garnering a good deal of press (as it should!). Apparently there are record crowds wanting to get a glimpse of their two favorite Literary Heroes and how they have shown up in popular culture for the past 200 years – and “The Shirt” is no small part of this (a.k.a. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy) – no, no, don’t get your hopes up, Mr. Firth is not part of the Exhibit (though he would be most welcome…), but rather the shirt worn for the endlessly-youtubed scene of Darcy emerging from a pool of standing water at Pemberley is on display in a locked glass case where it can be on view but protected from the expected mass hysteria of, well, the masses… Kissing a glass case is not quite the same as stroking a cotton shirt, albeit hanging rather listlessly from a plastic form… but it is still a must see if you can get there! Grown women have been known to faint away, despite the message from a young Jane to “run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint…” I do hope the Folger is up to the task of a gallery full of shirt-mad persons… (and dare I add that though I am NOT one of the shirt-hysteric Janeites who think this scene is the best in all of the nearly 6 hour film, I do confess a strong interest in getting a glimpse of the actual shirt worn by Colin Firth…)
If you are able to attend the JASNA AGM this year, to be held in Washington DC, October 21-23 (but do allow extra days for all there is to see and do) – you will get a chance to go to the Folger and see what all the fuss is about – the two curators (Janine Barchas of the University of Texas at Austin, and Kristina Straub of Carnegie Mellon University) will be on hand to tell us all about it. If you are not at the AGM, the exhibit runs from August 6 – November 6, 2016 and admission is free. In the sad event you shall miss it entirely, there are also various articles to read – see the links below.
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18th-century Staffordshire porcelain of William Shakespeare (Folger) /
and 20th-century figurine of Jane Austen (Joan Doyle)
Today however, I welcome Janine Barchas, who most graciously answered a few of my questions about how the idea of this Will & Jane grouping came about… if you have any questions, please comment below and she will get back to you. As an incentive, and especially for those of you unable to make it to the Folger, Janine has provided us a copy of the 18-page exhibit brochure – another piece of Jane Austen celebrity “stuff” we all like to collect! (see below for details)
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Will and Jane at Chawton Cottage
JAIV: Tell us how this exhibit came about?
JB: This was a case of classic academic one-upmanship. In 2012, Michael Witmore, the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, came to the University of Texas at Austin for a conference about the fate of books in a digital world. Over a meal, I joked that Jane Austen was “giving Shakespeare a run for his money” and asked what he was planning to do about it. As Mike and I continued to spar about the differences and similarities between the fan cultures around these two famous authors, an idea was born: “Will & Jane.”
Busts of William Shakespeare (Folger) and Jane Austen (Joan Doyle)
JAIV: How did you and Kristina Straub come to work on this exhibit together?
JB: Our partnership was the result of solid academic matchmaking! Mike Witmore was her former colleague at Carnegie Mellon University, so Kristina’s name came up right away in the context of her deep knowledge of Shakespeare’s reception in the 18th century. She and I had never met before our work on “Will & Jane” even though we are both 18th-century scholars and know many of the same people in what is a smallish field. This exhibition has been a full three years in the making, during which time we have grown very close. I look at our publications and label text and cannot tell you what sentence began as mine and which was first drafted by Kristina. Given that academics are known for their social awkwardnesses and a tendency to work best when alone, our partnership on “Will & Jane” has been an extraordinary intellectual experience – even outside of the unique content of the show.
Shakespeare bellows – Folger
JAIV: You mostly talk and write about Jane Austen, but also the book itself as part of the material culture of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. What was the biggest challenge in taking on this exhibit that largely deals with the artifacts of celebrity created and collected over the past 200 years?
Royal Worcester porcelain figurine of “Emma Woodhouse” (1998) from the collection of Joan Doyle / and a colored pottery tableau entitled “Othello Relates his Story (ca. 1880) from the collections of the Folger
JB: The dominance of non-book artifacts in this exhibition (ceramics, paintings, odd assortments of relics, tchotchkes, and souvenirs) may seem at odds with a serious library of rare books such as the Folger. However, although both Shakespeare and Austen are fundamentally admired for their great literary works, the history of their afterlives and the nature of their modern celebrity is not just about steady streams of new editions but about the material objects that ordinary fans crave and collect. This exhibition took us out of the usual library stacks of books and into art vaults and collections of so-called “realia.” Part of the challenge, then, of putting this exhibition together was for two academics who were used to talking about the language of plays and novels to learn how to think and talk about non-book and wordless objects and the stories they can tell. Mixing high and low culture in this exhibition (books with bobble-heads, so to speak) has been both a joy and a challenge. In practical terms, today’s objects that celebrate Jane Austen at her 200-year mark lack the historical patina of those Shakespeare “relics” and souvenirs that have been carefully preserved for two centuries. And yet we wanted these authors to stand together as potential equals. This meant that every juxtaposition of old and new objects, every comparison between the afterlives of Will and Jane, had to show similar impulses across centuries of fandom – in spite of any obvious differences between current market values of the materials shown.
JAIV: What most surprised you in your findings?
JB: We initially thought that in order to fill 20 large display cases, we might have to stretch the comparison a bit here and there. But we were amazed by the tight parallels between, for example, the public spectacles that celebrated Shakespeare around his 200 mark (e.g. a museum dedicated to the Bard and a Jubilee) and today’s BBC bonnet dramas that, in essence, do some of that same work to promote Jane Austen. Also, we were genuinely surprised by the manner in which Henry and Emily Folger resembled, in their dedication to all things Shakespeare, the collecting impulses of Alberta and Henry Burke, the couple who amassed the world’s most significant Jane Austen collection (now split between the Morgan Library and Goucher College). One thread across the exhibition is how these two American couples, collecting decades apart and focused on two very different writers, pursued their purchases in the same way.
JAIV: What do you hope visitors will take away from this exhibit?
Will and Jane at the Folger
JB: A sense of fun. We hope the combination of whimsy and scholarship is infectious and will help folks to see that even pop culture benefits from a larger historical framework.
JAIV: What has been the response so far?
A chalice made from the mulberry tree Shakespeare planted (Folger) /
a lock of Jane Austen’s hair (Jane Austen’s House Museum)
JB: A lively and lavishly illustrated review across two pages of the NYT weekend section on opening day surely helped to boost visitor numbers as well as raise our curatorial spirits. The public seems genuinely curious about a show that pairs these equally famous but very different authors. So far, we’ve had some record numbers in terms of daily visitors and received enthusiastic feedback from Folger docents. The docents are the well-informed volunteers who lead daily group tours and have their finger on the pulse of true public reaction. When they remain enthusiastic, you know a show is doing well.
JAIV: Who besides Shakespeare and Jane Austen has had such an impact on our celebrity-obsessed culture?
JB: Modern movie stars (and before them the starry thespians of the 18th-century stage) have glammed up both Will and Jane. Our exhibition features a number of film actors who have their feet in both Shakespeare and Austen camps and whose own celebrity is in a symbiotic relationship with these authors. From Laurence Olivier (photo stills and movie clips) to Emma Thompson (she loaned us the original typescript of her Sense and Sensibility screenplay), objects about and from movie stars adds a bit of Hollywood sparkle throughout the exhibition.
The Shirt – Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy (BBC)
JAIV: What is your next project???
JB: Hopefully another project with Kristina. It will indeed also be very hard to go back to a steady diet of “just books” after this. I suspect that odd bits of material culture will cling to all my research from now on. I see both Will and Jane differently now. They are each bigger than their written works alone.
This collector’s album for cigarette cards (London: Carreras Limited, ca. 1935) is one of many items in the exhibition showing Will and Jane being used to advertise non-book products
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Thank you Janine! – very much looking forward to seeing you and Kristina at the Folger in October!
If you would like to comment or ask Janine a question, please do so in the reply box below. Deadline will be Wednesday August 31, 2016 at 11:59pm – winner will be announced on Thursday Sept 1, 2016. Domestic only, sorry to say (our postal rates have soared).
Janine Barchas is Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity (Johns Hopkins University Press, August 2012). Her first book, Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge UP, 2003), won the SHARP book prize for best work in the field of book history. You can visit (and spend hours browsing!) her online digital project What Jane Saw(www.whatjanesaw.org) which includes the gallery of the British Institution that Jane Austen visited on May 24, 1813 and the “Shakespeare Gallery of 1796.” Barchas, along with colleague Kristina Straub, is currently curating an exhibition at the Folger on Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity.
“Will & Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity” runs August 6 through Nov. 6, 2016 at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol Street S.E., Washington; 202-544-7077.
* Our Regency Ball features Val Medve and the Burlington Country Dancers, music by “Impropriety” – Aaron Marcus (piano), Laura Markowitz (violin) and Ana Ruesink (viola) – instruction given, all skill levels welcome!
** We ask you to tell us in advance your favorite scene in the 1995 Pride & Prejudice – we will be showing and discussing these during the Tea.
I welcome JASNA-Vermont member Margaret Harrington, who has written a few words on our last JASNA meeting. As part of the Burlington Book Festival, we were fortunate to have Susan J. Wolfson, Professor of English at Princeton University, speak on her annotated edition of Northanger Abbey (Harvard UP 2014). With many thanks to Champlain Collegefor allowing us their fabulous space in Aiken Hall, to our hospitality team Hope Greenberg and Heather Brothers, and all our generous bakers for the usual delicious fare! We were all very honored for the opportunity to listen to and talk with Dr. Wolfson, who made us all love and appreciate Northanger Abbey all the more.
We at JASNA-Vermont also heartily thank JASNA (the Jane Austen Society of North America) for graciously offering us a grant so we could bring Dr. Wolfson to Vermont for this Burlington Book Festival event – we could not have done it without them!
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Susan J. Wolfson spoke on “Jane Austen before She Became Jane Austen” at our JASNA-Vermont September 27th meeting which was also an event for the Burlington Book Festival.
Dr. Wolfson gave a multi-layered talk centered on Northanger Abbey, the first book Jane Austen wrote and sold. In an engaging lecture the Princeton professor placed the book into the history of the time so that we, the audience and readers, could understand events behind the episodes of the novel. We gained new insights into what captured the young author’s imagination because we were given a lively narration of the London riots, Sir William Pitt’s system of surveillance, the social circus in Bath, and most of all, the template of the Gothic novel on which Austen based Northanger Abbey.
Wolfson’s talk wrapped the novel in the fabric of the society of the time so that we could understand the characters better, especially the dynamic between Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland. We also were given provocative ideas
such as Northanger Abbey is about training the mind of the reader, and that Jane Austen was not really interested in married life yet her first book has a Meta marriage plot. We learned that although this was her first novel it was not published until after the author’s death and there were years when it sat on the publisher’s shelf prompting Jane Austen to sign her complaint to the publisher as Mrs. Ashton Dennis, an acronym for MAD.
As I write this short report, I have before me on my desk the Jane Austen Northanger AbbeyAnnotated Edition edited by Susan J. Wolfson. It is a beautiful book to see, to touch, to open, to smell, and soon I will be reading it. This gives a whole new life to the book for me because I had reread it on my eBook before the lecture. How wonderful to look forward to this edition after attending such an insightful, interesting, accessible, engaging talk.
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Some photos from our event:
Co-Rc Marcia M
Hope G setting up food
Heather B, Theresa R, and our youngest JASNA-Vermont member!
Maryann P with more food
Susan Wolfson with Champlain College student Kes S.
You have doubtless been for some time in expectation of hearing from Hampshire, and perhaps wondered a little we were in our old age grown such bad reckoners but so it was, for Cassy certainly expected to have been brought to bed a month ago: however last nightthe time came, and without a great deal of warning, everything was soon happily over. We have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion. She is to be Jenny, and seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy. Your sister thank God is pure well after it, and send her love to you and my brother, not forgetting James and Philly…
[Letter from Mr. Austen to his sister Philadelphia Walter, December 17, 1775, as quoted from Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen, A Family Record, Cambridge, 2004, p.27.]
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In celebration of Jane Austen’s birthday today, JASNA has published its annual Perusasions On-Line Vol.35, No. 1 (Winter 2014). Click here for the Table of Contents to yet another inspiring collection of essays, some from the 2014 AGM in Montreal on Mansfield Park, and other “Miscellany” – all about Jane Austen…and perfect winter reading material…!
![will-jane-porcelain-figures2-jb[1]](https://janeausteninvermont.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/will-jane-porcelain-figures2-jb1.png?w=1024)
![will-jane-porcelain-figures-jb[2]](https://janeausteninvermont.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/will-jane-porcelain-figures-jb2.png)
Royal Worcester porcelain figurine of “Emma Woodhouse” (1998) from the collection of Joan Doyle / and a colored pottery tableau entitled “Othello Relates his Story (ca. 1880) from the collections of the Folger
Jane Austen in Vermont 