ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

   The novelist Lady Helen Emily Craven (1874-1926), was a direct descendant of Elizabeth Craven. The daughter of the 3 rd  Earl of Craven, she is usually known by her married name, Forbes, under which her novels were published.   She first ventured into print writing newspaper articles about fashion at the age of sixteen. On 7th October 1890 she advised readers of The Guardian :- "A fine and warm September has delayed considerably the production of autumnal novelties, for in these days of cheap imitation the best milliners and dressmakers jealously withhold their newest inventions till the last possible moment. Despite the rumours that reach us from Paris of a threatened revolution in dress, of stiff Holbein bodices, with padded rolls upon the hips, as yet the simple, graceful gored skirt and Princess polonaise continue to hold their ground. It is in the Tudor times, the long-past days of pearl-broidered kirtles and jewelled stomachers, that we shall find the o...

Why is there a square named Anspach Place in Southampton? It is named after Anspach House, a now-vanished building once occupied by Elizabeth Craven and her second husband, the Margrave of Anspach. She and the Margrave leased a house there on the West Quay from 1801 until 1812 to use as a holiday home. She loved sailing and kept a boat in Southampton harbour, in which she sailed across the Channel on at least one occasion. Southampton attracted many sailing enthusiasts who loved to take their private boats out towards and around the Isle of Wight. Later she also leased the adjacent house, and named the combined residence Anspach House.  It was next door to the mediaeval Westgate, with its stone Gothic arch.  Anspach House 1845 In July 1806, when recently widowed, Craven wrote to her friend Sir Isaac Heard from Southampton, "I visit this Place as the Prettiest and quietest for Sea-Bathing I know." [1]  In the summer of 1809, Craven spent some weeks there with he...

Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Jane Austen and the Brontës  by Devoney Looser. I wonder whether the blurb on this book was written by the publishers (Bloomsbury), or by the author. Nowadays publishers usually ask the author to write it. It claims:-" Before the Brontë sisters picked up their pens, or Jane Austen's heroines Elizabeth and Jane Bennet became household names, the literary world was celebrating a different pair of sisters: Jane and Anna Maria Porter. The Porters -- exact contemporaries of Jane Austen -- were brilliant, attractive, self-made single women of polite reputation who between them published 26 books and achieved global fame. They socialized among the rich and famous, tried to hide their family's considerable debt, and fell dramatically in and out of love. Their moving letters to each other confess every detail. Because the celebrity sisters expected their renown to live on, they preserved their papers, and the ...

 The names in Jane Austen's novels may appear bland and commonplace, but are always carefully chosen and often contain coded meanings.    In Pride and Prejudice,  Austen gave the heroine a name, Bennet, that is a close twin of her own.  Austen or Austin is a contraction of "Augustine". Austin-friars in the City of London is a street where before the Reformation there was a monastery of the order of St Augustine, one of many in England. The name Bennet is a contraction of "Benedict" another saint who founded a monastic order. Austen surely chose the name because the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, is a self-portrait. The Bennet family resemble the Austens in one crucial respect - they cannot pass on the family home to the next generation. Their predicament is due to an entail whereas that of the Austens arose out of the fact that her father was a clergyman whose rectory would pass to the next incumbent.     One of the privileges of the English aristocracy is...

  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 ...

Anna Countess Temple, circle of Thomas Hudson. Literary tastes and talents often run in families. Elizabeth Craven had an elder cousin who was also a poet, and whose works were published by Horace Walpole. She was Anna, Lady Temple, née Chambers, and her mother had been Lady Mary Berkeley, a daughter of the 2nd Earl of Berkeley.       Anna was born in 1707, the daughter of Thomas Chambers of Hanworth. She married Richard Grenville, Lord Temple. The Grenville family owned the estate at Stowe, in Buckinghamshire, celebrated for its splendid landscape design.     She does not seem to have been known as a Bluestocking or one of the circle of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu. But her friendship with Horace Walpole and his encouragement of her writing indicates that she must have been a cultivated woman.  In 1764  Walpole printed a volume of her poems at Strawberry Hill,  Poems by Anna Chamber Countess Temple,  and this is now available among t...