Birth of the British Novel

Henry Hitchings was filmed at Chawton House Library talking about Frances Burney with Emma Clery, Professor of Eighteenth Century Studies, University of Southampton. The page of subscribers from Camilla featuring Jane Austen referred to during the filming is the illustration above. You can see the programme using the following URL for another 6 days:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ydj1p

Epistolary Literature

Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time website makes available a programme from 2007 on epistolary fiction in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00775dh

It includes references to writers in the collection at Chawton House Library, such as Aphra Behn and Frances Burney. As a genre, epistolary fiction, was a hugely popular and novels by both well- and lesser-known authors are held in the collection. Many of these novels also remain anonymous and Chawton House Library has about 280 of these.

Villette by Charlotte Bronte and Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell

As I've been on annual leave there has been time to listen to the radio and BBC Radio 4 have featured dramatisations of both Villette and Ruth. Catch up with them on i-player:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ltt32

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvg9b

There's also been lots of fun with Desperate Romantics and BBC 2:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvyq2

Jane's Fame

Author of bestselling biographies Claire Harman was a Visiting Fellow at Chawton House Library in 2008. BBC Radio 4 have adapted her latest book Jane's Fame for their book of the week at the beginning of June. It starts on Monday 1 June:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00kpky6

It is being read by actress Alice Krige and will be on at 9.45 every morning or you can catch up with it on BBC i-player.

Mary Wollstonecraft - 250 years on

The BBC are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the birth of Mary Wollstonecraft with a series of three letters addressed to her http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00k9d8q. The first is by Janet Todd on Wollstonecraft's treatise Thoughts on the Education of Daughters and there are 3 days left to listen to it on BBC i-player. The second will be Richard Reeves updating Wollstonecraft on her ideas about republicanism. The BBC link will take you to the information page with the episode and schedule details.