Gillian Dow has been appointed the new Executive Director of Chawton House Library, the leading study centre for English women’s writing from 1600 to 1830.

Dr Dow will be focusing on developing a fundraising strategy to ensure the charity’s long-term sustainability. This will include increasing legacies and major donations from individuals, and building stronger relationships outside academic circles with the business world.

Dr Dow, 38, has been with the charity since 2005, and was previously responsible for organising conferences, lectures and events, as well as running the prestigious Visiting Fellowship programme with the University of Southampton.

She will continue to develop the academic activities at Chawton House Library with the support of colleagues in the Southampton Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies.

Prior to joining the University of Southampton in 2005, Dr Dow, a graduate of the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford, taught French and English at several Oxford colleges and at Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne University, and also worked as a translator.

Dr Sandy Lerner, Founder of Chawton House Library and Chair of its Board of Trustees, said: “The commitment, intelligence, energy and creativity that Gillian has brought to our programme made her our obvious first choice.

“I’m grateful to offer this leadership and continuity to our friends, scholars and, of course, our ladies.” 

Executive Director, Dr Gillian Dow, said: “When people choose to support or make a donation to Chawton House Library, they need to have to have a clear sense of what it is they’re supporting.

“We’re a study centre and our collection of writings is unique: there isn’t one like it anywhere else and that needs to be our focus.

“Women’s writing of the period of the 1600 to 1830 period will be at the heart of everything we do. The women writers of this period were such a diverse and intrepid bunch that we will never run out of ideas for how to promote our collection.”

Chawton House Library aims to educate and inspire people of all ages to read the works of early English women writers from 1600 to 1830, from Aphra Behn to Mary Wollstonecraft, and preserve the literary heritage for academics and non-scholars for generations to come.

The house itself, which is more than 400 years old and belonged to Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen Knight, is regularly open to visitors, alongside library readers, for tours and during public events.  It also provides research facilities for Visiting Fellows from around the world, learning projects with local schools and colleges and fosters links internationally through seminars and conferences.

For more information, read Dr Dow’s blog post about her new appointment and vision for the Chawton House Library.