ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

When Elizabeth Craven travelled from London down to Southampton to visit the Isle of Wight, which she loved, she must have passed through Alton in Hampshire, and may even have driven right past the house, Chawton Cottage, where Jane Austen was living from 1809 until 1817. There was a family connection between them as Jane's sister Cassandra had been engaged to Elizabeth Craven's son's chaplain, who died tragically on a military expedition to the West Indies. And with the Austens was living Martha Lloyd, who was related to the Craven family. Her mother had been born a Craven. This red brick house on a corner in the village of Chawton was the property of Austen's wealthy brother Edward who also owned the local manor house. He provided a former bailiff's cottage on the estate for his widowed mother and two sisters, and it was here that Jane lived for the last eight years of her life, while she wrote most of her best novels. Nowadays the house is preserved as a tribute ...

Author Julia Gasper An interview by Jolanta Ryba  from Oxford Prospect This Question and Answer interview with the well-known historian and  Oxford biographer Julia Gasper , about her latest book, a biography of  Elizabeth Craven . 1. How different was this book about Elizabeth Craven from your previous books? Actually, it was very different, because this is the first time I have written about an English person, and the first time I have written about a woman. Both my previous biographies were of men, and foreign subjects – King Theodore of Corsica, and the  Marquis d’Argens . Having said that,  Elizabeth Craven  is still a very Continental Englishwoman, and I still had to use sources in French and write about places in Germany or further afield. 2. What encouraged you to write about her? Well, I came across her when I was doing the research for my last book about the  Marquis  d’Argens. He ...