Chawton House Library
Encyclopedia
Chawton House
Chawton House is a grade ll* listed Elizabethan manor house in the village of Chawton in Hampshire. It was formerly the home of Jane Austen's brother, Edward Austen Knight, and is now a library and study centre....
http://www.chawtonhouse.org/index.html, Chawton
Chawton
Chawton is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. It is 1.6 miles southwest of Alton, just south of the A31 which runs between Farnham and Winchester. The village is famous as the home of Jane Austen for the last eight years of her life...
, Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
.
The Library is now The Centre for the Study of Early English Women's Writing, 1600-1830,http://www.chawtonhouse.org/index.html
Opened in 2003, it has a collection of over 9,000 books together with related original manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
s. It is set in 275 acres (1.1 km²) of Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
countryside, and is used for conferences, filming and more recently as a venue for weddings. The Library works in partnership with the University of Southampton
University of Southampton
The University of Southampton is a British public university located in the city of Southampton, England, a member of the Russell Group. The origins of the university can be dated back to the founding of the Hartley Institution in 1862 by Henry Robertson Hartley. In 1902, the Institution developed...
, and provides an important resource for the university's MA
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in 18th Century Study.http://www.chawtonhouse.org/education/southampton.html
Women Writers
Below is a list of female authors, whose works are to be found at the Library.Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
(1775-1817)
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.-Early life:...
(1640-1689)
Frances Brooke
Frances Brooke
Frances Moore Brooke was an English novelist, essayist, playwright and translator.-Biography:Brooke was born in, Claypole, Lincolnshire, the daughter of a clergyman. By the late 1740s, she had moved to London, where she embarked on her career as a poet and playwright...
(1724-1789)
Mary Brunton
Mary Brunton
Mary Brunton was a Scottish novelist.-Life:Mary was the daughter of Colonel Thomas Balfour of Elwick, a British Army officer and Frances Ligonier, daughter of Colonel Francis Ligonier and sister of the second earl of Ligonier. She was born on 1 November 1778 on Burray in the Orkney Islands...
(1778-1818)
Frances Burney (1752-1840)
Sarah Burney
Sarah Burney
Sarah Harriet Burney was an English novelist, the daughter of musicologist and composer Charles Burney, and half-sister of the novelist and diarist Frances Burney .- Life :Sarah Burney's mother, Elizabeth Allen, was the second wife of...
(1772-1844)
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe...
(1768-1849)
Sarah Fielding
Sarah Fielding
Sarah Fielding was a British author and sister of the novelist Henry Fielding. She was the author of The Governess, or The Little Female Academy , which was the first novel in English written especially for children , and had earlier achieved success with her novel The Adventures of David Simple...
(1710-1768)
Mary Hays
Mary Hays
Mary Hays was an English novelist and feminist.- Early years :Mary Hays was born in Southwark, London on Oct. 13, 1759. Almost nothing is known of her first 17 years. In 1779 she fell in love with John Eccles who lived on Gainsford Street, where she also lived. Their parents opposed the match but...
(1760-1824)
Eliza Haywood
Eliza Haywood
Eliza Haywood , born Elizabeth Fowler, was an English writer, actress and publisher. Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywood’s literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest...
(1693-1756)
Elizabeth Inchbald
Elizabeth Inchbald
Elizabeth Inchbald was an English novelist, actress, and dramatist.- Life :Born on 15 October 1753 at Standingfield, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, Elizabeth was the eighth of the nine children of John Simpson , a farmer, and his wife Mary, née Rushbrook. The family, like several others in the...
(1753-1821)
Sophia Lee
Sophia Lee
Sophia Lee was an English novelist and dramatist.She was the daughter of John Lee , actor and theatrical manager, and was born in London...
(1750-1824)
Harriet Lee
Harriet Lee
Harriet Lee was a novelist and playwright.Born the daughter of actor John Lee, Harriet Lee grew up in an artistic family. In 1786 she published The Errors of Innocence, an epistolary novel...
(1757-1851)
Charlotte Lennox
Charlotte Lennox
Charlotte Lennox was an English author and poet. She is most famous now as the author of The Female Quixote and for her association with Samuel Johnson, Joshua Reynolds, and Samuel Richardson, but she had a long career and wrote poetry, prose, and drama.-Life:Charlotte Lennox was born in Gibraltar...
(1729-1804)
Delarivier Manley
Delarivier Manley
Delarivier Manley was an English novelist of amatory fiction, playwright, and political pamphleteer...
(1663-1724)
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, as wife to the British ambassador, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about...
(1689-1762)
Sydney Owenson,Lady Morgan(1783-1859)
Ann Radcliffe
Ann Radcliffe
Anne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...
(1764-1823)
Mary Darby Robinson (1758-1800)
Anna Seward
Anna Seward
Anna Seward was an English Romantic poet, often called the Swan of Lichfield.-Life:Seward was the elder daughter of Thomas Seward , prebendary of Lichfield and Salisbury, and author...
(1742-1809)
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
(1797-1851)
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith
Charlotte Turner Smith was an English Romantic poet and novelist. She initiated a revival of the English sonnet, helped establish the conventions of Gothic fiction, and wrote political novels of sensibility....
(1749-1806)
Melesina Chenevix St. George Trench (1768-1827)
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
(1759-1797)
Novels on-line project
The Novels On Line projecthttp://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/novels.html makes freely accessible the full-text transcripts of some of the rarest works in the Chawton House Library collection.These texts explore broad-ranging themes as satire, slavery, marriage, witchcraft and piracy.
In bringing these little-known novels to a wider audience, it is hoped to stimulate interest in these works amongst a new generation of readers.
The texts are completely unedited, and have been copied from the originals as accurately as possible. Even printer errors have been retained.
This is an ongoing project with more novels and texts being made available on line.
Events
Events are held regularly at the library; these include Open Days, Fellows Lectures and Heritage Open Days.Knight Collection
The Library also houses the Knight Collection, a private collection of books belonging to the Knight family who owned and lived at Chawton House for 400 years. This collection of books was once owned by Edward Austen Knight, the brother of Jane AustenJane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
, and it is known that she used this collection of books.
The Walled Garden
Edward Austen Knight had the idea to build a new walled garden during his sister Jane Austen’s lifetime: in 1813, She wrote to her brother Frank:“He (Edward Austen Knight) talks of making a new Garden; the present is a bad one & ill situated, near Mr Papillon's; — he means to have the new, at the top of the Lawn behind his own house.”
Today, Edward Austen Knight's original walls are mostly still intact. The restoration programme for this area is vast, and requires funding and the support of volunteers as it is the intention to rebuild the glasshouses and potting sheds that have long since fallen into disrepair. The central space is used for the production of vegetables, soft fruits, herbs and flowers.
Chawton House is registered with the Soil Association
Soil Association
The Soil Association is a charity based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1946, it has over 27,000 members today. Its activities include campaign work on issues including opposition to intensive farming, support for local purchasing and public education on nutrition; as well the certification of...
, and is now certified as an organic producer. Everything grown in the walled garden is for use by the Library, with any surplus being sold locally in aid of the charity. The gardens are being restored using Edward Austen Knight's original planting scheme.
The walls of the garden still require repair and re-pointing, and work is being done to restore the glasshouses in the near future.
Visiting the Library
The Library can be visited at any time, by appointment. However, first-time visitors are required to bring some form of identification.