ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

St Mary's Church in Kintbury, West Berkshire, contains a curious monument dating from the late eighteenth-century, when Jane Austen sometimes stayed in the village as a guest of her friend Eliza, wife of the vicar, the Rev. Fulwar Craven Fowle. He owed his job to his second cousin once removed, Lord Craven, who was the patron of the parish.  The Rev. Fowle  commanded the local company of military volunteers, and did so very admirably, by all accounts. In 1799, he was complimented by George III in person. The monument is one of a pair of very handsome marble memorials to members of the Raymond family, who owned the local manor house of Barton Court. It commemorates a Mr Jemmet Raymond and his second wife, Elizabeth who, before she married Jemmet Raymond, was Mrs Charles Craven, grandmother of both the vicar and his wife. There are life-sized marble busts of both of them, in Roman attire, a large classical urn and this inscription: "Sacred to the memory ...

When Elizabeth Craven moved back to England in 1792 as the wife of the Margrave of Anspach, they bought Brandenburgh House in Hammersmith, a mansion that had once been owned by George Bubb-Doddington, Lord Melcombe. They had to remove a lot of Melcombe's ostentatious bad taste, particularly a marble floor in the upstairs gallery, which loaded it down and put stress on the building. Other things that had to go were Melcombe's crest, in pebbles, set into the middle of the front lawn; a hideous fireplace hung with spars representing icicles, and a bed with purple hangings, lined with orange, crowned by a dome of peacock's feathers. One day when Doddington had been showing the gallery to Edward, Duke of York, with its door of white marble, supported by lapis lazuli columns, its collection of busts and statues, and its inlaid marble floor, he is supposed to have said, “Sir, some persons tell me that this room ought to be on the ground.” “Don't worry Mr. Doddingto...

It was so exciting to see this first edition of the poetry of Margaret Cavendish, Lady (later Duchess of) Newcastle, beautifully preserved in the library of St Edmund Hall, Oxford and on show during their open day. Margaret Cavendish was one of Elizabeth Craven's precursors in poetry, a woman author who had to struggle to get people to take her seriously as a writer. She is one of so many exciting women writers who have been re-discovered in recent years and given the attention they so richly deserve. Cavendish has many things in common with Craven: both were overt feminists and both wrote plays that feature cross-dressing heroines. Cavendish's works are extraordinary and ingenious, not least because of their metaphysical blend of science and philosophical ideas with poetry. This poem, "A World in an Ear-ring", is a virtuoso display of mental and verbal ingenuity.  A World in an Earring An earring round may well a zodiac be, Wherein a sun...

It has been an eventful year for the Elizabeth Craven Society. On January 19th 2019, a reading was held of Craven's play The  Miniature Picture , at the  play-reading group of Dr Lois Potter in London University. For many,  this was their first acquaintance with the play and with Elizabeth  Craven. It was a very jolly occasion. The general verdict is that this  is still a performable play, whose comedy would amuse a modern  audience, and whose feminist ideas come over very clearly. Other highlights have included the discovery of two hitherto unknown  works by Elizabeth Craven, including the full-length novel The Witch  and the Maid of Honour, which is written about here on my blog:- https:// elizabethberkeleycraven. blogspot.com/2018/04/the- witch-and-maid-of-honour-lost- novel.html The other work, never before studied by any critic or attributed to  her in bibliographies, is Pleasant Pastime for a Christmas Evening ,  written about on ...

Elizabeth Craven's works are a lot more numerous than usually supposed. She never made a complete list of them in her Memoirs, which is a pity. Very few are mentioned in the DNB entry under her name. This catalogue is regularly updated. Abdoul, a comedy,    printed in  Nouveau Theatre de Societe d'Anspac et de Triesdorf,  ed. Asimont, Volume 2, 1791. The Adventures and Exit of Sir Tristram Fiddle-Faddle. MS tale. c.1793. In FELS, Catholic Institute Paris. An Arcadian Pastoral .  1782. MS in Bodleian Library. Epilogue was printed in The Annual Register, or a View of the history, politicks and literature of 1782 ,  ed.Robert Dodsley, p.200. Also in The Hibernian Magazine, Or, Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge , 1782 p.271. The Castle of Alstein, a Melodrama. Unpublished MS play in three Acts.   c.1793. FELS archive, Catholic Institute, Paris. Diane, or, Repentir des Voeux.    Ballet en un Acte, avex des Arri...

Henrietta Vernon, Lady Grosvenor, by Thomas Gainsborough    When a Georgian woman got divorced, she was supposed to disappear into a twilight of disgrace and social disapproval. At the end of Mansfield Park , this happens to Maria Bertram, who elopes with Henry Crawford, is divorced by her husband Mr Rushworth, and ends up banished from England to live somewhere abroad "remote and private". But did she really have such a terrible fate? I sometimes imagine that Maria Rushworth had a whale of a time in Paris or Brussels, far away from Mansfield Park. The life of Henrietta, Lady Grosvenor, suggests that divorce was not always such a disaster. There was in fact a flourishing Alternative Society in Georgian England, within which such women lived with impunity and they were very much in the public eye. Miss Caroline Vernon c.1780 by  François-Xavier Vispré from National Tr ust  collection, Attingham Park, Shropshire, the home of her sister Anna. Henrietta, L...