La Belle Assemblee: creating a new type of magazine

La Belle Assemblée, or in full La Belle Assemblée or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine Addressed Particularly to the Ladies, was a British women's magazine published from 1806 to 1837, founded by John Bell (1745–1831).

La Belle Assemblée was a landmark in the history of magazine production and a testimony to John Bell’s talent in raising the standards of magazine production. Bell believed a periodical needed to appeal visually and the lavishness of La Belle Assemblée marks it as the ancestor of modern glossy magazines. Leigh Hunt, the Romantic critic and poet, described Bell’s innovations in typography as ‘elegant’; the layout and illustrations were equally fine and produced in a format larger than other contemporary magazines, such as the Lady’s Magazine, and much larger than the pocket-sized Ladies’ Monthly Museum.

La Belle Assemblée is now best known for its Georgian fashion plates but until the 1820s it also published original poetry and fiction, non-fiction articles on politics and science, book and theatre reviews, and serialized novels, including Oakwood Hall by Catherine Hutton. Another notable contributor to La Belle Assemblée was Mary Shelley, and works by both of these authors can be found in the collections here at Chawton House Library.

Each number of La Belle Assemblée typically contained five plates—one depicting a member of the court or fashionable society, two depicting the latest fashions, and a further two providing sheet music and a sewing pattern—the magazine was not dominated by the frivolities of fashionable dress. Bell separated the portion of the work dealing with the fashions of the month from the remainder of the publication. Initially the two sections could be purchased separately; the first consisting of the bulk of the letterpress, together with two of the plates, the second ('La Belle Assemblée') consisting of the fashion plates and a sewing pattern, together, usually, with four pages describing the plates and discussing the latest London and Paris fashions. The presentation was meticulous and for the first few numbers each section was bound in a bright orange wrapper and with engraved title pages.

Montagu Knight's Edwardian Christmas

The star of the exhibits on display for the Edwardian Christmas was a hand written and illustrated menu for Christmas Dinner 1911sent from Sokoto, (Nigeria) listing all the fare of a traditional Christmas dinner:

Soup

Fish Mayonnaise

Stewed Pigeons on Toast

Tomatoe Farcies

Roast Turkey

Saddle of Mutton

Rum Pudding

Fruit Salade

Foie Gras

Coffee & Dessert

We matched it against one in a contemporary cookbook; a game ledger with an entry for the day after Boxing Day 1911; photographs of beaters ready for a shoot; instructions for handmade gifts; an illustrated colour-printed book of entertainments for the family; and a book of eighteenth-century prints that belonged to the Edwardian owners, Montagu and Florence Knight. The book of prints was displayed open at a page with a snowy scene and appropriately drew together two of the most significant periods of the House's history.

Family Bibles: 455 years of Bibles in the Knight Collection at Chawton House Library

The Knight Family have lived on the estate of Chawton since 1524. Four generations on Elizabeth Knight, whose portrait can be seen in the Great Gallery, made her cousin Thomas May her heir. Thomas May, taking the name Knight united the properties of Chawton and Godmersham Park in Kent. Both houses had libraries and the current Knight Collection now holds what remains.

Thomas Knight’s son, also Thomas, adopted Edward Austen, again a cousin, as his heir. The arrival of Jane Austen in the village in 1809 happened because Edward Austen Knight provided a home in the Bailiff’s Cottage. His son, also Edward, made his home at Chawton from 1826 and Godmersham Park was sold in 1874.The main collection contains a sales catalogue of the estate, and the contents of the library at Godmersham were moved to Chawton House. The holdings of the Godmersham Park Library were recorded in 1818 in the surviving two volume manuscript catalogue, which gives us some idea of the books moved to Chawton after the sale of Godmersham.

Edward died a few years later in 1879 and his son Montagu, inherited Chawton Park. Montagu Knight had a catalogue compiled for the library at Chawton House in 1908 and currently the existing Knight Collection is being catalogued.

The current owner, Richard Knight, inherited the collection in 1989 and no changes have been made to it since then, so with the documentary evidence we have about the family holdings we will in time reconstruct the development, changes and dispersals of a family’s collection over several generations between 1818 and 1989.

This long-term project includes the Bibles held in the Knight Collection at Chawton House Library which date back to before the King James Bible was completed in 1611. It is pertinent at the point where 400 years of the King James Bible is being celebrated to look at one family’s relationship with religion using some of the evidence we have.

William Tyndale produced the first printed translation of the New Testament in English in 1525. The official Great Bible of 1539, with a preface picturing Henry VIII, was intended for reading aloud in churches and it re-used much of Tyndale's work. In 1557 the Geneva (Calvinist) New Testament in English was published, followed in 1560 by the complete Geneva Bible. This was superseded in England in 1568 by the official Bishops' Bible, although the Geneva Bible was still widely used. Then in 1601, there was the new initiative in Scotland which led to the production of the King James Bible in 1611. By about 1900 the language of the King James Bible was seen as increasingly archaic and many other versions have been produced, including the New English Bible, amongst many others, but also one we are familiar with now.

So far I have collated the following list of the bibles in the Knight Collection:

1. Hole, W. (ill.) (1909?) The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: translated out of the original Greek: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty's special command .London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. [Accession no. 9471] Illustrated and containing prayer cards.

2. The New English Bible: New Testament (1961). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press. [Accession no. 9482]

3. The New English Bible: New Testament (1961). Oxford: Oxford University Press; Cambridge University Press. [Accession no. 9469] This Bible is dedicated to ‘Anne from Hylda Bannister with many happy memories of Hall Dene School, Alton, and best wishes for a very lovely life in the future’.

4. The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testament; translated out of the original tongues: being the version set forth A.D. 1611 compared with the most ancient authorities and revised (1960). London: The British and Foreign Bible Society. [Accession no. 9483] Inscribed ‘Anne Knight’ with lists of bible readings.

5. The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testament / translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by His Majesty’s special command; appointed to be read in churches; Authorized King James version; printed by authority (1957). London & New York: Collins’ Clear-Type Press. [Accession no. 9475] inscribed ‘Anne Knight’ and containing a prayer card.

6. The Holy Bible - containing the Old and New Testament translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty’s special command; appointed to be read in churches (1938). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Accession no. 9467]

7. Leusden, J. and Hooght, E.v.d. (eds.) (1831) Biblia Hebraica, secundum ultimam editionem jos. athiae a Johanna Leusden...ab Everado van der Hoght, V. D. M. Editio nova, recognita, et emendata, a Judah D'Allemand. Londini: Typie excudabat A. Macintosh, 20 Great New Street. Impensis Jacobi Duncan, Paternoster Row. [Accession no. 9478] Inside the front board is the stamp of Adela Portal, and inside the back board the bookplate of her son, Montagu Knight.

8. The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testament: translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by His Majesty’s special command. Appointed to be read in churches; Authorized King James version; printed by authority (1929). Oxford: Printed at the University Press, for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. [Accession no. 9481] Contains two black and white bookplates for P. A. Knight of a type , one is Peter Rabbit, that suggests ownership by a child.

9. The child’s Bible being a consecutive arrangement of the narrative and other portions of holy scripture in the words of the authorized version: with upwards of two hundred original illustrations (1897). London: Cassell and Company Limited. [Accession no. 9470]

10. The annotated paragraph Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments, arranged in paragraphs and parallelisms; with explanatory notes, prefaces to the several books, and an entirely new selection of references to parallel and illustrative passages. The Old Testament. (1864). London: The Religious Tract Society. [Accession no. 9472] This bible is that of C.E. Knight (Charles Edward Knight) who was a younger son of Edward Austen Knight and lists the details of his family’s births and deaths from 1846-1918.

11. Scott, T. (ed.) (1850) The Holy Bible; containing the Old and new Testaments, according to the authorized version; with explanatory notes, practical observations, and copious marginal references / by the late Rev. Thomas Scott... a new edition, with the authors last corrections and improvements, and eighty-four illustrative maps and engravings. [New edn.] London: Printed for Messrs. Seeleys, Fleet-Street and Hanover-Street; Hatchard and Co., Piccadilly; and Nisbet and Co., Berners-Street. [Accession no. 9473]

12. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by his Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches. (1841). Oxford: Printed at the University Press, by Samuel Collingwood and Co. printers to the University; for the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. [Accession no. 9484] There are a set of bibles, differing slightly in size but bound similarly, this one is inscribed ‘Chawton Lending Library, 1841’ and because of the context of the 1840 bible seems to have been made available to the village under the influence of Adela Knight.

13. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the original tongues; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by his Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches. Cum privilegio. (1840). Cambridge: Printed by John W. Parker, University Printer; and for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London. [Accession no. 9485] Labelled ‘Chawton House, Blue Room’ and dates from the time of Edward Knight’s marriage to Adela Portal.

14. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the original tongues; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised / by his Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches. Cum privilegio. (1839). Cambridge: Printed by John W. Parker, University Printer; and for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London. [Accession no. 9487] Bound similarly to the 1840 bible this is labelled ‘Chawton House, Green Dressing Room’ and is a partner to the ‘Blue Room Bible’.

15. Girdlestone, C. (ed.) The Old Testament. With a commentary consisting of short lectures for the daily use of families by the Rev. Charles Girdlestone M.A. vicar of Sedgley, Staffordshire (1837). London: Printed for J. G. & F. Rivington. [Accession no. 9477]

16. Girdlestone, C. (ed.) The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. With a commentary consisting of short lectures for the daily use of families by the Rev. Charles Girdlestone M.A. vicar of Sedgley, Staffordshire (1835). London: Printed for J. G. & F. Rivington. [Accession no. 9476]

Both of the Girdlestone testaments contain the bookplate of Montagu Knight.

17. Scott, T. (ed.) (1835) The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments, according to the authorized version; with explanatory notes, practical observations, and copious marginal references / by Thomas Scott, Rector of Aston Sandford, Bucks. New edn. with the author's last corrections and improvements; and with two maps London: Printed for L. B. Seeley and Sons; Hatchard and Son; Baldwin and Cradock; and R. B. Seeley and Burnside. [Accession no. 9474]

18. The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testament / translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty’s special command; appointed to be read in churches (1833). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

19. D'Oyly, G. and Mant, R. (eds.) (1826) The Holy Bible, according to the authorized version; with notes, explanatory and practical taken principally from the most eminent writers of the United Church of England and Ireland: together with appropriate introductions, tables, indexes, maps and plans / prepared and arranged by the Rev. George D'Oyly and the Rev. Richard Mant... under the direction of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for the use of families. Oxford: Printed for the Society at the Clarendon Press. [Accession no. 9468] This bible contains the bookplate of Edward Knight and lists, as traditionally for a family bible, Edward Knight’s marriage to Adela Portal, his second wife, and the details of their children, including Montagu Knight. This seems to confirm that the ‘Edward Knight’ bookplate found in the Knight Collection is not that of Edward Austen Knight as may have been thought. It also appears that the first leaf has been removed and this may have recorded the details of Edward Jnr.’s first marriage to Mary Dorothea Knatchbull.

20. La Bible qui est toute la Ste. Ecriture du Vieil et du Nouveau Testament autrement L'Ancienne et la Nouvelle Alliance (1678) .Amsterdam: chez la Veuve de Schippers. [Accession no. 9479] Contains Montagu Knight’s bookplate.

21. Cranmer, T. (1585) The Holy Byble, conteining the Olde Testament and the New. Authorised and appointed to be read in churches. Imprinted at London: By Christopher Barker, printer to the Queen's most excellent Maiestie. [Accession no. 8962] contains the bookplate of Montagu Knight.

22. Il Nvovo Ed Eterno Testamento Di Giesv Christo (1556). Lione: Per Giouanni di Tornes e Guillelmo Gazeio. [Accession no. 9480] Contains the bookplate of Montagu Knight.

The next step now is to see which of these can be found in both the 1818 and 1908 catalogues and to see what conclusions can be drawn from this evidence. Were the oldest bibles owned by the Knight family at the time of their publication, or purchased by Montagu Knight? There is a huge preponderance of bibles published from the 1830s and those of the sixteenth century contain Montagu Knight’s bookplate and it may be useful to look further at the influence of the Oxford Movement, and Anglo-Catholicism on Adela Knight, and subsequently her son.

Chawton House Library Reading Group: New season 2010-2011

The reading group convened again on Monday 20 September to discuss Ashton Priory one of the rare texts in the collection. Ashton Priory can be accessed as part of the Novels-On-Line project http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/novels.html, or purchased as a paperback from Chawton House Library. It was an extremely lively session and we discussed whether it was a Gothic novel, the history of the Minerva Press, stock characters, Restoration comedy and whether or not it was a morality tale.The demand of a reading public for novels in the eighteenth century and the advent of Gothic and romance novels brought a need for libraries accessible to the general public. William Lane took advantage of this and opened a lending library in 1763 in Whitechapel, moving to Leadenhall Street in 1790 where he set up Minerva Press. Minerva Press dominated the novel publishing business for the next fifteen years and Ashton Priory is one example of its output. Ashton Priory, written in 1792 and published anonymously, is not a Gothic novel, it is melodramatic but it has no element of horror. Its stock characters are reminiscent of Restoration comedy and the novels of Henry Fielding, such as Sir Bevil Grimstone, an old fop well-past his best and the malapropisms of the tyrannical Butterfield matriarch. Money and society, female education and the promotion of meritocracy are the central themes woven around the romances of the young and the subterfuges of the covetous. The trials Charlotte and Eliza face result from the greed of others: Charlotte narrowly escapes a forced marriage to a licentious nobleman who has offered to ‘buy’ her from her guardian; Eliza, the erstwhile romantic novel reader, faced with the fragility of respectability when she is left destitute by her husband evades prostitution. Eliza dies tragically, punished for the fanciful notions that she develops from her reading, and the well-balanced, irritatingly virtuous Charlotte is rewarded by marriage to the man she loves. She merits reward in this tale, as do her brother, members of the Sanders family and the man who becomes her husband, George Danby. They all are hard-working, socially responsible characters. The villains of the story: the avaricious, the lustful, the lazy, the conceited, have to change or loose status, die and face disgrace. We had to conclude it was a morality tale and an emphatically middle class one. Over the year we will several more of the books that form part of the Novels-On-Line project including The Castle of Tynemouth by Jane Harvey and Cava of Toledo; or, the Gothic Princess, Augusta Amelia Stuart.

A Case of Mental Courage

David Brooks has written in the New York Times about mental character and rigour in thought quoting Frances Burney as an example of mental fortitude:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/opinion/24brooks.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

To quote Brooks: 'In 1811, the popular novelist Fanny Burney learned she had breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy without anesthesia. She lay down on an old mattress, and a piece of thin linen was placed over her face, allowing her to make out the movements of the surgeons above her.' Burney suffered physically and mentally for months after her operation but forced herself to face it, and write about it with moral fortitude. Brooks presents her as a role model for all of us now in how we should step back and think about our own weaknesses in thinking.

The image above shows a photograph of the Frances Burney books in the collection at Chawton House Library and we also have a developing collection of critical works of and about Burney.

That 'known scribbler': Frances Burney in the collection at Chawton House Library

Chawton House Library has first and early editions of Frances Burney's work and the titles of her novels are known from references in the writing of Jane Austen, her contemporary and fan, and the endeavours of feminist scholars to 'rediscover' the works of early modern women writers in the second half of the twentieth century. Burney was, in the closing years of the eighteenth century, a renowned and influential novelist, but after her death she became known primarily as a diarist. After Pepys she may well be the second most important social commentator with her journals and letters (1768-1839) reflecting upheavals in British and European culture and history. Her life-writing also reveals her concerns about her literary ambitions and achievements as an eigtheenth-century woman writer.

The Library's Frances Burney holdings can be found on the catalogue:

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/index.html

'Adorn'd with Cuts': the Illustrated Book in the Eighteenth Century

We held at conference at Chawton House Library today that drew on the growing interest and debate about the use of images to illustrate texts in the flourishing print culture of the eighteenth century. The conference drew together different approaches to book illustration in order to consider the production, purpose and interpretation of images in books of this date. The photograph above shows an exhibition of a number of the Library's most intriguing illustrated texts curated for this event.

The day's speakers included Helen Cole, University of Southampton and Chawton House Library; John Feather, University of Loughborough; Ann Lewis, Birkbeck College, University of London and Brian Alderson, Institute of English Studies. The presentations had one overriding theme in common: questions about how readers used images in their understanding of the texts, and what publishers were trying to communicate with their use of images.

The exhibition displayed books thematically: diagrammatic illustration, fashion and fiction, conduct literature, artists and engravers, portraits and tales of terror. The books displayed included Behn's translation of La Montre, Mirror of the Graces, Halifax's Advice to a Daughter, Blackwell's Herbal, Heywood's Examplary Women and Wilkinson's Lisette of Savoy.

Chawton House Library Reading Group 2010-2011

The Library runs a reading group for the discussion of the work of women writers, 1600 to 1830,The group meets each month, September to May, on the third Monday of the month at 2pm. Afternoon tea is available during the Reading Group meetings for £2.50 per person.

This year we are going to read some of the novels-on-line texts which will be available in paperback and we will focus on the Gothic. The profits from the books published by Chawton House Library go towards new acquisitions to continue the development of the library’s collection. As 2011the bicentenary of the publication of Sense and Sensibility that has to be on the list!

Chawton House Library Reading Group Schedule 2010-2011

Monday 20 September 2010 Ashton Priory, Anonymous. Chawton House Library Books £15.00

Monday 18 October 2010 The Poems of Charlotte Smith, ed. Stuart Curran. OUP USA; New edition edition £18.00 (A selection of poems from the book will be selected by Ruth Facer, a member of the group and an independent scholar.)

Monday 15 November 2010 The Castle of Tynemouth, Jane Harvey. Chawton House Library Books (price tbc.)

Monday 20 December 2010 The ‘Blazing World’ and other writings, Margaret Cavendish. Penguin £9.99

Monday 17 January 2011 The Princess of Cleves. An Historical Novel, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Verne La Fayette. Chawton House Library Books (price tbc.)

Monday 21 February and Monday 21 March 2011 Eighteenth-Century Women Dramatists, Mary Pix, Susanna Centlivre, Elizabeth Griffith, Hannah Cowley. £9.99 (We will discuss 2 plays from this book for each of these 2 sessions.)

Monday 18 April 2011 Cava of Toledo; or, the Gothic Princess, Augusta Amelia Stuart. Chawton House Library Books (price tbc.)

Monday 16 May 2011 Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen. Penguin £3.99

Susannah Centlivre discussed on Radio 4

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/04/2006_45_mon.shtml

Centlivre's The Wonder is April's book for the Chawton House Library reading group. It is a lively, fast-paced comedy and you will be able to read a review later.

Chawton House Library Images

Chawton House Library has a wealth of illustrations, and decorative frontispieces, hidden away between the pages of the books, as well as stunning collections of paintings and maps. All of the images used on this blog are from these and are copyright to Chawton House Library. They can be provided by application to the Library for other publications, contact library@chawton.net.

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.

Chawton House Library Reading Group

The next meeting of the group will be on Monday 18 January and we will be reading:

The History of Mary Prince: a West Indian Slave (1831) by Mary Prince. It can be purchased from the Chawton House Library online store http://www.chawtonhouse.org/shop/index.html.

The inclement weather meant that the Reading Group did not meet on Monday 21 December (we would have been snowed in at Chawton!) and I have promised the group members that we will discuss The Sylph by Georgiana Cavendish first and then move onto Mary Prince, so that no reading, or preparation for the session, will be wasted.

Next CHL Reading Group meeting

Time has passed so rapidly and our next meeting is on Monday 21 September and we are reading Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story. To purchase this book visit our page on Amazon:

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chawhouslibr-21

It will raise funds for the Library and help us to keep developing the collection.

Twitter

CHL Library news and quirky personal peccadilloes http://twitter.com/jacquigrainger

The Madwoman in the Attic

This week's Times Higher Education features The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar under its series on the literary canon ('The Canon', p. 47). A text I'm glad to say we have in the collection here at Chawton House Library. Deborah D. Rogers, professor of English at the University of Maine, ends her article with a question often raised about the recovery of women writers: '... some argue that ghettoising female authors is no longer necessary to counteract their marginalisation. For them, the time has come for a more integrative history of literature. But, echoing my children's complaints on long drives, I can't help but ask: "Are we there yet?"'

Hester Thrale Piozzi

It's excellent to see Hester Thrale Piozzi, TLS August 7 2009, featured in the Life and Lives of Dr Johnson (just as she should be!) at The National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition runs until December 13.

Read Man of Fetters: Dr Johnson and Mrs Thrale by Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/12/08/081208crat_atlarge_gopnik

and search our online catalogue for Thrale Piozzi holdings at Chawton House Library:

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/index.html

Explore the inside of the collection at Chawton House Library

There is now a recommended reading page on Amazon that gives a taste of the first and early editions held in the collections at Chawton House Library:

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chawhouslibr0b-21

Explore the collections using the online catalogue as well;

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/library/index.html

Reading Group Books

Use this link to buy the books for the 2009 - 2010 session of the Chawton House Library Reading Group:

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/chawhouslibr-21

The list can be found on the blog at:

http://chawtonhouselibraryreadinggroup.blogspot.com/2009/05/reading-group-schedule-2009-2010_14.html#comments

I hope that many of you that can't make it here will read along and post your comments on the books as they are reviewed.

Chawton House Library Books - a new series of reprints

Chawton House Library houses a unique collection of early women’s writing from the period 1600–1830. Housed in the Elizabethan manor that once belonged to Edward Knight, it is a library with a direct connection to his celebrated sister, the novelist JaneAusten (1775–1817) who moved to Chawton with her mother and sister in 1809. The library contains early (and frequently rare) editions of novels, plays, memoirs, poetry and travel writing by women, as well as works on education, history, science and botany. One fascinating section of the collection offers literature pertaining to women’s lives in the long eighteenth century: cookery books, guides on how to manage domestic servants and setting down exactly what is required of a lady’s maid, how to dress and educate one’s children, instructions on how to behave and what to read to improve oneself. It is this area of the collection that this series will celebrate. Jane Austen’s interest in the domestic in her letters to her sister Cassandra has enchanted generations of her readers. Writing from Chawton, Austen rejoices in a great crop of Orleans plumbs, whilst lamenting the wretched appearance of Cassandra’s mignionette, and relating that Miss Benn has a new maid from near by Alton; she tells her sister that they will have ducks next week, and enquires after ‘peices for the Patchwork’; she says of their cook that she is ‘tolerable’ and that ‘her pastry is the only deficiency’; she approves Fanny and Cassandra’s bonnets, and tells of her pleasure in ‘receiving, unpacking & approving our Wedgwood ware’. Austen’s letters to Cassandra are a rich source for piecing together female domesticity in the early nineteenth century. One can, however, have too much of a good thing: Austen famously writes, after a visit from her brother Edward to Chawton in September 1816, ‘Composition seems to me Impossible, with a head full of Mutton Joint and Rhubarb’. Austen’s major preoccupation at Chawton was, after all, not the running of a household, but rather the publication, revision and composition of her six novels, all of which were sent out from Chawton to be published between 1811 and1818. In these classic works of English literature, the way in which the domestic informs the narrative intrigues a twenty-first century reader. Would Betty’s sister, an excellent housemaid who works very well with her needle, have done well as a lady’s maid for the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility? Can we ever have such an intricate understanding of the variety and merits of strawberries as the party at Donwell Abbey in Emma? It is to the literature of Austen’s own period that we must turn for answers to these, and many other, vexing questions. For those who wish to understand Mr Woodhouse’s discourses in praise of gruel in Emma, Mrs Bennet’s anxiety when there is not a bit of fish to be got and Lizzie Bennet’s preference for a plain dish over a ragout in Pride and Prejudice, these reprints of rare texts from the Chawton House Library collection will have much to offer. What precisely were the ‘usual stock of accomplishments’ taught to Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove at school in Exeter in Persuasion, and why does Lydia gape at Mr Collins’s reading of Fordyce’s Sermons in Pride andPrejudice? Some answers will be found in Chawton House Library reprints of conduct literature. And for a true understanding of what it might mean for Fanny Price to be scorned by her better-dressed cousins for having only two sashes in Mansfield Park, for Henry Tilney to understand muslins particularly well in Northanger Abbey, and indeed just how Lucy Steele might have gone about trimming up a new bonnet, with pink ribbons and a feather, in Sense and Sensibility, instruction will come from reprints of works on eighteenth-century dress and fashion. All profits from this series of reprints will go directly towards the Chawton House Library acquisitions fund, helping us to improve and expand the library collection for generations of future readers.

Gillian Dow
Chawton House Library

Fashion and dress in the collection

Fashion as we know it - a series of rapidly mutating trends in the style of the dress - began in the eighteenth century. The way a person dresses, the clothing they select, sends out a set of social signals that communicate class and status. It is also the most personal form of self-expression and the choice of what both covers and decorates the body leads us to form conclusions, conscious or unconscious, about each other.

Jane Austen’s letters reveal her interest in being fashionable: ‘My black cap was openly admired by Mrs. Lefroy, and secretly I imagine by everyone else in the room’ (Steventon to Godmersham, 1798). Her niece, Fanny Knight, owned copies of La Belle Assemblee, like those on display here, and periodicals such as these, or Ackerman’s Repository and the Lady’s Magazine contained engravings of the latest styles. Newspapers also offered information on current fashions. This commodification of dress for the leisured classes gave employment to writers and illustrators, just as today fashion magazines thrive on the twice-yearly output of the fashion industry.

News of fashion spread by word of mouth and by letter remained important, especially for those without access to periodicals. Austen demonstrates this in an 1814 letter to Martha Lloyd: ‘I am amused by the present style of female dress; the coloured petticoats with braces over the white Spencers and enormous Bonnets upon the full stretch, are quite entertaining. It seems to me a more marked change than one had lately seen.’

Dress in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, as displayed here, was an indicator of a person’s wealth and status and considerable expense was necessary to maintain a fashionable lifestyle. Fashion demanded followers from all classes and again Austen was a participant, if not victim, in the need to consume the latest trends. She wrote from London in 1811: ‘I am getting very extravagant & spending all my Money …’ and she lists two different muslins and Wedgwood as items on her shopping list. Remaining fashionable required more than lengths of fabric: there were also ribbons and other trimmings, sewing and embroidery threads, buttons and, maybe, a dressmaker. Then there were shawls, cloaks and hats, bonnets and caps, veils, headdresses, shoes and gloves, not forgetting, fans, bags, reticules, jewelry, and underneath it all underwear and stockings.

In Austen’s Persuasion Sir Walter Elliot is ridiculed for his vanity and obsession with fashion. He examines himself in the mirror, feels that Lady Russell could do with the help of some makeup and recommends Gowland’s Lotion for improving complexions. A real product of the period, Gowland’s Lotion was advertised in 1814 as a solution to face and skin problems just as facial skincare is sold today. For those that could afford more than a sliver of soap toilet waters were a fashionable part of personal hygiene and in 1822 George IV’s perfume bill was £263. It is still possible to buy some of the fragrances made around this time, which were eau de colognes and single flower waters, especially lavender, rose and orange flower.

In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) by Mary Wollstonecraft, Austen’s contemporary, an interest in fashion as a form of 'slavery': 'The air of fashion which many young people are so eager to attain, always strikes me like the studied attitudes of some modern prints, copied with tasteless servility after the antique; the soul is left out, and none of the parts are tied together by what may properly be termed character.' Wollstonecraft dressed with apparent carelessness which signalled her seriousness as a philosopher, just as in the twentieth century Katherine Hepburn wore old clothes, safety-pinned, to show she had not been seduced by Hollywood's glamour.