A Message from Gillian Dow, incoming Executive Director at Chawton House Library

As I sit at my desk on the top floor at Chawton House Library, I have the library terrace visible from the window behind me, and a view of the ha ha from the window on the left. I can hear bird song, and sheep! I am conscious that when I take on the role of Executive Director on the 1st of July, I have a truly enviable position. For sheer location and tranquility of surroundings, Chawton House Library is very special.

But what concerns me most – and what has always concerned me, since my arrival as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Southampton and Chawton House Library back in September 2005 – are the books here in our library collection. These rare – sometimes unique – texts are what makes Chawton House Library a rich resource for scholars of women’s writing of the period 1600-1830, and they are what unite visitors and library readers from around the globe.

Delegates at our current conference Romance and its Transformations, 1550-1750 are gathered in the dining room, listening to a variety of papers on Spanish romance and its reception in Britain. The lower reading room contains an exhibition of books related to the conference topic, put together by Dr Helen Cole, a former student on the MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University of Southampton, and a recipient of an Arts & Humanities Research Council collaborative doctoral award at Chawton House Library. Conference activity is crucial in uniting scholars to share the preliminary results of their research. But they are not the ‘end goal’, as it were. What results from the work of these events is, ultimately, new books: books that illuminate the texts of the past and introduce them to new readers. John Wiltshire is just one scholar who pays tribute to two conferences hosted at Chawton House Library in his recently published book, The Hidden Jane Austen, and we frequently receive donations of books from former visiting fellows, grateful that we gave them much-needed time to complete their manuscripts.

A conference in May 2012, held to commemorate the publication of Anna Letitia Barbauld’s groundbreaking poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven, A Poem, led to Anna Letitia Barbauld: New Perspectives, published by Bucknell University Press at the beginning of this year.

Edited by William McCarthy, keynote speaker at the conference, and by Olivia Murphy, former visiting fellow here at Chawton House Library, it is the first ever volume of essays devoted to Barbauld, and provides essential material covering the poet and public intellectual today: we are immensely proud of our involvement in this collection.

In a related vein, my colleagues at the University of Southampton, Stephen Bending and Stephen Bygrave, and Jennie Batchelor, University of Kent, are presiding over the Pickering and Chatto Chawton House Library series, now a multi-volume series of new editions of female-authored texts. These are rare works, for the specialist reader. And it takes a Chawton House Library to promote them. Jane Austen has been doing very well without us: Ann Gomersall and Elizabeth Hervey need our help. We’re pleased, therefore, to be continuing our Novels Online project, making accessible lesser-known works of female-authored fiction. Anyone can read Sarah Green’s Romance Readers and Romance Writers of 1810 on our website. Doing so, one sees clearly the context in which Austen wrote Northanger Abbey.

We have a unique library collection, and we want everyone to benefit from it – Jane Austen fans, visiting academics and independent scholars, enthusiasts and specialists alike. And I entitled this piece ‘Change and Continuity’ not only as a nod to the titles of Austen’s novels, but to the team Steve leaves behind him, and who I will have the pleasure of working with. Some – Keith Arscott our Development Director, and Darren Bevin, our librarian – are new to the organisation. Others – Sarah Parry, our education officer, and Corrine Saint, our business manager – have been here longer than I have. We’re a small team, but we’re a passionate and hard-working group of individuals with diverse and specialist skills, from working with heavy horses to caring for the fabric of the building and the grounds. We are led by an experienced and committed board of Trustees, including our founder Sandy Lerner. And we are supported by a tireless and committed team of volunteers: we quite simply couldn’t manage without them.

We will need all of our skills in the coming years. As Steve Lawrence put it in his leaving blog, ‘small education or arts-based charities, particularly ones that have an Elizabethan manor as their base, are expensive to run’. We must increase our supporters, both nationally and internationally, to ensure the long-term sustainability of Chawton House Library.

How will I be going about this? In the first instance, I will be approaching learned and literary societies to support our visiting fellowship programme, enabling both scholars with institutional support and independent scholars to access our collection while living in the Stables on site. It is my great pleasure, as a first step in this direction, to announce that in the academic year 2015-2016, we will be offering the Marilyn Butler memorial fellowship. This fellowship is in honour of our patron, Professor Marilyn Butler, former Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, who started her career as a leading scholar of Romantic-Period literature with a literary biography of Maria Edgeworth. More named fellowships will follow in the coming years, and I’d be delighted to talk to anyone who would like to honour a former tutor or friend by naming a fellowship after them.

I’ll also be working closely with our Development Director, Keith Arscott, to make applications to a variety of foundations, and to seek support from the business world. We have a loyal and devoted following globally. But, to paraphrase Jane Austen herself, although we like praise as well as anybody, we ‘like what Edward calls Pewter too’.

In conclusion, it’s vital that we stay true to our core mission of promoting early English women’s writing to the widest possible audience. 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. I’ve always been very sure about what Chawton House Library is: a leading centre for the study of early women’s writing, a unique collection of books, and an idyllic setting. Do come and join us in the library, or at one of our events here in the future.