Academic conferences form an important part of our programme of events. They contribute to scholarly work in the field of women’s writing in English 1600 to 1830, and related topics, and they disseminate the results of the research by selected publication.
We have hosted numerous international conferences which have resulted in significant collections of essays, published with major presses in the UK and USA.
View our diary of forthcoming conferences and seminars
Previous conferences:
2023
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Friday 1st September 2023 to Saturday 2nd September 2023 Online |
Online Conference: Quills and CharactersA two-day academic conference bringing together scholars working on letters to share their projects and approaches to women’s letters in the 18th and 19th centuries. |
2021
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Sunday 25th April 2021 Online |
Celebrating William CowperA free virtual study day to celebrate the life and works of Jane Austen’s ‘favourite moral writer in verse’, William Cowper. |
2020
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Friday 15th May 2020 to Sunday 17th May 2020 Chawton House |
Lockdown Literary Festival3 days of literary heaven, broadcast direct to your home. |
2017
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Thursday 13th July 2017 to Saturday 15th July 2017 Chawton House |
Conference: Reputations, Legacies, FuturesAn international conference at Chawton House Library to mark the bicentenary of the deaths of Jane Austen and Germaine de Staël #AustenStaël |
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Friday 2nd June 2017 to Sunday 4th June 2017 Chawton House |
The Independent Libraries Association's 28th Annual ConferenceBricks, Shelves, Books & People. Building for the Future as an Independent Library. |
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Saturday 25th February 2017 Chawton House |
Conference: Writing Art: Women Writers as Art Critics in the Long Eighteenth CenturyA one-day conference focusing on women writers as art critics in the late Georgian and early Victorian period. |
2016
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Friday 14th October 2016 to Saturday 15th October 2016 Chawton House |
Placing Charlotte Smith - Canon, Genre, History, Nation, Globe210 years after Charlotte Smith’s death, exploring the latest research on Smith and her places. |
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Saturday 23rd July 2016 Chawton House |
Women and Shakespeare Day ConferenceThe part women have played in constructing Shakespeare’s reputation and ensuring his ongoing fame. |
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Thursday 7th July 2016 Chawton House |
Charlotte Lennox, Shakespeare, and the Independent MindAn overview of Lennox’s career, particularly her ground-breaking study of Shakespeare’s source material. |
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Friday 13th May 2016 to Saturday 14th May 2016 Chawton House |
Charlotte Brontë: A Bicentennial Celebration of her Life and WorksMarking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, one of England’s most beloved authors. |
2015
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Wednesday 16th September 2015 to Thursday 17th September 2015 Chawton House |
Isabelle de Charrière and England: An English CelebrationHer life and works, reception in England, and contribution to the novel in the 18th century. |
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Saturday 5th September 2015 Chawton House |
BBC Pride and Prejudice 1995: Reflections around a much-loved productionTwenty years on, a day of talks to celebrate and commemorate this landmark in television history. |
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Thursday 9th July 2015 to Friday 10th July 2015 Chawton House |
Actress as Author – Nell Gwyn to Ellen TerryThe stage offered women an unprecedented freedom to speak out. |
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Friday 15th May 2015 Chawton House |
Religion and Literature in the Long Eighteenth CenturyApproaches to genre, form, and reading practice. |
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Monday 13th April 2015 Chawton House |
Physical Archives in the Digital AgeThe way we relate to books and physical archives in an increasingly digital age. |
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Monday 13th April 2015 Chawton House |
Marilyn Butler and the War of IdeasIn this 40th anniversary year of the publication of Butler’s Jane Austen and the War of Ideas . |
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Saturday 28th February 2015 Chawton House |
Study Day: Experiencing the Georgian GardenA day of talks organised by the University of Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies. |
2014
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Friday 19th September 2014 to Saturday 20th September 2014 Chawton House |
The Image of Finance: Why Jane Austen on the £10 Note MattersCoinciding with the exhibition ‘Show me the money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present’. |
2013
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Thursday 4th July 2013 to Saturday 6th July 2013 Chawton House |
Pride and Prejudices: Women’s Writing of the Long Eighteenth CenturyA landmark conference held to celebrate the Library’s ten-year anniversary. |
2012
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Friday 11th May 2012 to Saturday 12th May 2012 Chawton House |
Anna Letitia Barbauld in Twenty Hundred and Twelve: New PerspectivesCo-hosted by the Department of English, University of Leicester, and SCECS, University of Southampton. |
Novel Approaches: The Language of Women’s Fiction, 1750-1830
24th to 25th February 2012
Co-hosted by the Department of Linguistics, University of Liverpool and SCECS, University of Southampton
2009
New Directions in Austen Studies, a bicentennial conference to commemorate Jane Austen’s move to the village of Chawton in 2009
9th to 11th July 2009
Co-hosted by CHL and SCECS.
Selected articles resulting from papers presented at this conference can be found online, as a special issue of the Jane Austen Society of North America’s journal Persuasions On-Line edited by Gillian Dow and Susan Allen Ford.
2008
‘Readers, Writers, Salonnieres’
May 2008
Selected papers from this conference, co-organised by the Universities of Southampton, Swansea, and Warwick, were included in a special issue of the journal Women’s Writing in 2011, Women Readers in Europe: Readers, Writers, Salonnieres edited by Katherine Astbury, Hilary Brown and Gillian Dow, and in Readers, Writers, Salonnieres: Female Networks in Europe edited by Hilary Brown and Gillian Dow.
2007
Imagining Transatlantic Slavery
16th to 17th March 2007
A two-day conference co-organised by the Library and the University of Southampton.
Collectors & Collecting: Private collections & their role in libraries
19th to 20th July 2007
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Mary & Elizabeth: Partners both in throne and grave
10th to 12th September 2007
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Remapping Austen: Jane Austen in Europe and Beyond
8th November 2007
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Study Day on Jane Austen and Contemporary Culture
June 2007
Several edited collections of essays resulted from this activity: Imagining Transatlantic Slavery, edited by Cora Kaplan and John Oldfield; Tudor Queenship: The Reigns of Mary and Elizabeth, edited by Alice Hunt and Anna Whitelock; and Uses of Austen: Jane’s Afterlives, edited by Gillian Dow and Clare Hanson.
2006
Translators, Interpreters, Mediators: Women’s Writing 1700-1900
March 2006
‘Wild Irish Girls’
July 2006
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A bicentenary conference to mark the publication of Sydney Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl and Maria Edgeworth’s Leonora
Both conferences were jointly organised by Chawton House Library and the department of English at the University of Southampton.