Newsletter of the Elizabeth Craven Society 2025

 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 revealed a remarkably uninhibited lifestyle. 

   Several members were invited to attend the launch of the exhibition Pride and Patronage at Uffington Museum to mark the 250th  anniversary of Jane Austen. It focused on her links to the Craven family, who were the major landowners in the Uffington and Berkshire area.                 

Not only was Austen's mother, Cassandra Leigh, a distant cousin of the Cravens, but her close lifelong friends, the Lloyds and the Fowles, were all descended from the Cravens and dependent on them for patronage. It was nice to see the museum's authentic miniature portrait of Elizabeth Craven, along with helpful family trees, and a picture of Ashdown House.


Publications.
In the past year, new reprints of several of Elizabeth Craven's works have appeared, including The Georgian Princess (Culturea,  ISBN: 9791041996261) and The Miniature Picture (Culturea, ISBN: 9791041995950).
   Craven is mentioned in Fatema Mernissi for Our Times, a festschrift edited by Minoo Moallem and Paola Bacchetta, and translated by Paola Bacchetta (Syracuse University Press, 2025, ISBN:9780815657354, 0815657358). It makes a refreshing change to find that this book notes the very positive and fair things that Craven said about Turkey in her travelogue.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous23 April 2025 at 12:18

    I have to laugh at your term "colourful nature" -- that is one way to put it! Thanks, Julia, for everything that you have done this year. It makes me so happy that we are all working together to preserve the memories of this family.

    ReplyDelete

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