If you missed yesterday afternoon’s episode of Antiques Road Trip, you can catch it here on iplayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04yjp70/antiques-road-trip-series-10-episode-9
About 8 minutes in, there is a section on Chawton House Library featuring our Executive Director, Dr Gillian Dow, talking about Jane Austen and some of the women writers who helped pave the way for her literary career.
One such woman was Newcastle born, Mary Astell (1666-1731). In an age of limited life choices for women, Astell appealed for the importance of female education, writing that ‘tho the son convey the name to posterity, yet certainly a great part of the honour of their families depends on their daughters’. You can learn more about this author and her powerful feminist texts, in an evening lecture we are hosting on 20th May, 2015.
Another self-educated female writer featured in the clip is Frances Burney (1752-1840).One of the most popular novelists of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, she had a great influence on the young Jane Austen. Burney published her novel, ‘Camilla’ (1796), by subscription, and a ‘Miss J Austen of Steventon’ is listed as one of the subscribers.