ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

 It has been a busy year. Notably, we are very pleased to have arranged for a substantial collection of manuscripts associated with Elizabeth Craven to be deposited in the archives of Chawton House in Hampshire, the research institute for the study of women's writing in the age of Jane Austen. This is an ideal destination, where they will be available for future scholars.      The collection, which was in the hands of a descendant of Elizabeth Craven, includes a manuscript volume of her early poems, more than a dozen autograph letters, and further letters that passed between her husband, the 6th Baron Craven, and his estate manager concerning their financial affairs. It is of both historic and literary significance.    We have held two online seminars, one about the contents of the MS collection and the other to hear a talk given by Jill Kamp about Keppel Craven and the secrets to be discovered in his diaries. Some of these were of a colourful nature and re...

Chawton cottage.    I'm sure many people are, like me, enjoying watching the TV dramatisation of Gill Hornby's novel "Miss Austen", which centres on Jane Austen's elder sister, Cassandra.    I have not, alas, read the book. I intend to do so but for now will be content to enjoy Keeley Hawes' performance as Cassandra in later life, and the very atmospheric recreation of the Regency world. The casting of Jane Austen herself is certainly rather surprising, not at all like the classical beauty we are used to seeing on the £10 banknote. Patsy Curran has an expressive and distinctly comical face, far darker than most portrayals of the authoress.    If you know anything about Jane Austen you will be familiar with the story of how her elder sister's fiancé died before they could be married, leaving her to remain "Miss Austen" for life. After Jane's death Cassandra destroyed an unknown number of her sister's letters, cutting out passages from the ...

An interesting little document has turned up for sale at a London dealer's.  It is a receipt by an engraver for a payment of £100 for the work of preparing an engraving from Sophie de Tott's painting of the Prince de Condé. The receipt is dated 16th June 1802, soon after the portrait was painted. The purpose was to make reproductions of the painting and sell them widely. The interesting thing is that it seems that De Tott herself had to pay the engraver in advance for doing this. presumably she had a contract that gave her a percentage of the profits, but nevertheless she was having to make a considerable investment in the expectation of doing that. this little slip of paper is now on sale for £280 which in relative terms is worth far less than £100 was in 1802. Sophie-Ernestine de Tott, French émigrée artist.] Signed Autograph order for David Morier to pay Gregorio Francisco de Queiroz for Francisco Bartolozzi’s engraving of her painting of the Prince de Condé. With de Queiroz...

 Lady Isabella St John, subject of my new book,  The Life and Novels of Isabella St John: The Regency Revisited, was related in multiple ways to Elizabeth Craven.  Isabella St John was born Lady Isabella Fitzroy in 1792, and was the fourth daughter of the fourth Duke of Grafton.  In 1812, her elder brother, Henry, Earl of Euston, married Mary Caroline Berkeley, daughter of Admiral George Berkeley and niece of Elizabeth Craven. Craven wrote about the match at the time to her friend Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, saying, "My brother the Admiral is coming home. His last and 3d daughter is going to be married to Ld Euston, who is a good sort of young man, I am told, which is better than being a Duke's son."*   We find a drawing of Mary Caroline in Lady Isabella's sketchbook, done a few years later:- Can we perhaps detect a resemblance to this drawing of her aunt, Elizabeth Craven, that appeared in a book of about 1805? Or is that merely imagination?     Anoth...

Portrait of a lady, said to be Lady Theophila Lucy nèe Berkeley, later Nelson.      Lady Theophila Berkeley, born in 1650, was the second daughter of George, 1st Earl of Berkeley. Her father managed to save the family fortunes, reduced to a critical state during the Civil War, by marrying Elizabeth Massingberd, daughter of the Treasurer of the East India Company. Theophila's younger sister was the notorious Lady Arabella Berkeley, who ran away with Lord Grey. While the two sisters were very different in most respects, both became notorious.     Theophila was passionate and strong-willed, one of her passions being for brilliant men. She might be said to resemble her great-great-niece Elizabeth Craven in one respect, in that she was an author, albeit of a very different kind.      In 1668, when she was eighteen, Theophila married the nineteen-year-old Sir Kingsmill Lucy (1649-1678). He had inherited the estate of Faccombe, in Hampshire on the border...

  In May 1820, only three years after Jane Austen died, an article appeared in The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register , a periodical edited by Thomas Campbell, ‎Samuel Carter Hall, and ‎Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton  ‎(author of The Last Days of Pompeii ). It was an extended appreciation and evaluation of the women writers of the time, and was entitled "On the Female Literature of the present age; No. 2. The Author of Glenarvon; the Miss Porters; Mrs. Inchbald; Madame Arblay; Miss Burney; Lady Morgan; Miss Austen; Mrs. Jackson; Miss Taylor; ..."     The critic gives high praise to many of Jane Austen's contemporaries. When he (assuming it is one if the three editors who is writing) comes to Jane Austen, he laments her early death, and praises her in terms that may surprise modern readers.  " ... We turn from the dazzling brilliancy of Lady Morgan's works to  repose on the soft green of Miss Austen's sweet and unambitious creations . Her " Sense ...