• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Appendix: What Happened to Jane Austen’s Books? Biographers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries inevitably touch on one of the few known facts of Austen’s life – the sale of ‘her’ books (books actually owned by her father) prior to the family’s removal to Bath in 1801, when Austen was 25 years old.1 The newspaper advertisement offering the books and other house- hold effects for auction is displayed at Austen’s cottage in Chawton, and in his Bibliography of Jane Austen David Gilson lists these volumes, including those that survive in libraries and in private collections.2 Apart from the records of this sale, however, Gilson and other researchers have recourse only to the occasional men- tion of books in Austen’s letters for her purchases after 1801. However genteelly poor the all-female Austen household was, some book buying would not have been unreasonable, and we know Austen occasionally gave books as gifts. As H. J. Jackson writes, ‘new books were luxuries but not out-of-reach luxuries’.3 It seems improbable that an author – and, moreover, such a keen reader – would have limited her read- ing to the selections available from circulating libraries, however well stocked, or to borrowing from family members, however generous. Although, so far, only one or two explicit records have been found of Austen’s book purchases in propria per- sona, I believe that Austen – like any literary middle-class woman of the period – is likely to have bought a few books during her lifetime, especially after her move to Chawton and the success of her early publications provided her with some domestic and financial security.4 Positing such a collection of volumes, it remains to determine which novels Austen may have bought for herself (we know she purchased books as gifts5), and what became of them after her death. In this appendix I suggest that such a collection did exist, and that it was eventually sent to Austen’s brother Edward Knight’s estate at Godmersham Park, where it maintained a degree of separateness from the larger Godmersham library. In 1818, the year following Austen’s death, Edward commissioned a catalogue of his library at Godmersham, both volumes of which are now in the possession of Chawton House Library. The manuscript catalogue was added to, clearly some years later and in a different, unprofessional hand, to include subsequent additions to the library. The final page of the catalogue, as well as some loose leaves inside one of its volumes, list the contents of the ‘South Case’. These entries, judging from the pub- lication dates of books they include, appear to have been made after 1835. It seems likely, therefore, that the contents of the south case arrived at Godmersham after the original catalogue was made in 1818. The books named as belonging to the south case include a full set of Austen’s own novels, along with a number of contemporary novels and volumes of poetry that the evidence of Austen’s letters and novels suggests she had read. These include many of the texts referred to in preceding chapters: Mary Brunton’s Self Control, Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake and Marmion, Frances Burney’s The Wanderer and Maria Edgeworth’s Patronage. Also listed is Canterbury Tales (most likely the 1804 work of that name by Sophia Lee, author of The Recess, and her sister Harriet) and an 1810 edition of the novel reputed to be Austen’s favourite, Samuel Richardson’s Sir Charles 177 178 Appendix: What Happened to Jane Austen’s Books? Grandison. Figures 2 and 3 are photographs of the manuscript catalogue entries for the south case at Godmersham and the loose leaves found within the catalogue’s pages (each accompanied by a transcription), taken with the permission of Chawton House Librarian Jacqui Grainger. Transcription of the final page of the MS Library Catalogue of Godmersham Park, now part of the Knight Collection at Chawton House Library (Figure 2) South Case Oct Specimens of the 7 vols shelf 1 London 1819 British Poets Self Control 3 vols 1 Edinburgh 1811 Marmion 2 vols 5 ______ 1810 Canterbury Tales 5 vols 2 London 1804 Lady of the Lake 2 Edinburgh 1810 Removed to Drawing Room Patronage 4 vols 3 London 1814 History of Sir C. Grandison 7 vols 3 London 1810 The Looker On 4 vols 6 London 1795 Lyell’s Principles of Geology 4 vols 4 London 1835 Removed to Drawing Room Edgeworth’s Tales of 6 vols 4 London 1818 Fashionable Life Curiosities of Literature 5 vols 4 London 1823 Ditto Northanger Abbey & 4 vols 5 London 1818 Persuasion The Wanderer 5 vols 5 London 1814 Draw’g room Roderick 2 vols 5 London 1815 Ditto Sense and Sensibility 3 vols 6 London 1811 Ditto Pride and Prejudice 3 vols 6 _______ 1813 Ditto Mansfield Park 3 vols 6 _______ 1814 Ditto Emma 3 vols 6 _______ 1816 Thinks I to myself 2 vols 6 _______ 1812 Notes Titles in bold indicate volumes possibly owned by Jane and Cassandra Austen. Italicised titles indicate later additions to the manuscript, added interlineally. Volumes published after Jane Austen’s death, including Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, Edgeworth’s Tales of Fashionable Life and Specimens of the British Poets may have been those in Cassandra’s possession. The Looker On was a periodical published by the pseudonymous Reverend Olive-Branch; Canterbury Tales is most likely not Chaucer’s, but Harriet and Sophia Lee’s 1804 work of that name; Roderick is probably Robert Southey’s Roderick the Goth, but there is also an 1815 edition of Smollett’s Roderick Random, and Scott’s Don Roderick is a possibility; Thinks I to Myself is a Shandean pastiche by Edward Nares. Appendix: What Happened to Jane Austen’s Books? 179 Figure 2 Godmersham Library Catalogue (1818), n.p. South Case books: Specimens of the British Poets – Lyell’s Principles of Geology Transcription of loose sheet found inside Godmersham Library Catalogue (Figure 3) 1853. January 14. Books belonging to the Library Catalogue, now in the Drawing room. Miss Edgeworth’s Patronage. taken from South Case. Slip 1. Shelf 9. Miss Edgeworth’s tales of fashionable life 6 vols. – 4th shelf Northanger Abbey, Persuasion. 5th shelf Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma – 6th shelf Holy Bible 2 vols. taken from West Case. Slip 1. Shelf 2 Common Prayer from the same. 180 Appendix: What Happened to Jane Austen’s Books? Figure 3 Loose sheet, found within Godmersham Library Catalogue (1818), n.p. In accordance with her will, Jane Austen’s small estate, with a few exceptions, passed to her sister Cassandra (see L, 355). Before her own death, Cassandra undertook her now infamous organisation of her sister’s letters, during which she destroyed some, and bequeathed the remainder to various friends and relatives. I have found no record of Cassandra willing any of her own or her sister’s books to any family members – her will only records her financial bequests. Cassandra’s will was executed by her younger brother Charles, and his daughter (Cassandra’s goddaughter) Cassandra Esten Austen. The latter inherited from her godmother the interest on a parcel of land worth six pounds eight shillings per annum, property that had been left to Jane and Cassandra Appendix: What Happened to Jane Austen’s Books? 181 by Cassandra’s godmother, Elizabeth Leigh: property thus passed through three gen- erations of unmarried women.6 In addition to this property, by assisting with the execution of Cassandra’s will, Cassandra Esten, as Le Faye writes, ‘became possessed of memorabilia of Jane Austen which Cassandra had always preserved’ (L, 488). Pat Rogers guesses that this may have included a first edition of Pride and Prejudice, now held by the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas, that has Cassandra’s signature on its title page. Rogers further suggests that Cassandra Esten gave the book to her brother’s wife, Emma Austen (née de Blois), who in turn passed it to Emma Austen-Leigh, the wife of James Edward Austen-Leigh, author of the Memoir.7 It is far from clear, however, that Cassandra Esten kept the rest of the Chawton cottage books. The unusual contents of Godmersham library’s south case suggest that Cassandra Esten may have sent those books once owned by Jane and Cassandra Austen at Chawton to Godmersham Park to join the largest collection of books owned by the Austen and Austen-Knight families. Equally possible, as Kathryn Sutherland has suggested, is that Cassandra Austen, before her death, sent these books to her niece Fanny Knight at Godmersham along with some of Jane Austen’s letters. Too little documentary evidence survives, however, to establish proof. The strange position of the south case books within the context of the broader Godmersham library is nevertheless telling. For the most part, the Godmersham catalogue provides evidence of only the most typical of eighteenth-century gentlemen’s libraries, the kind of library that Mr Bingley could have assembled rapidly at Netherfield. It includes many volumes of Christian theology and sermons (including Fordyce’s and Blair’s), history, biog- raphy and letters, politics, travel and geography, agriculture and animal husbandry, legal texts useful to a local magistrate, peerages, and a few works of numismatics and art history that suit the amateur collector or grand tourist. A smaller number of texts not in English are predominantly letters, histories and Greek and Latin classics. There are many volumes of poetry, including Aikin’s (that is, Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s) Pieces and British Poets and Charlotte Smith’s Sonnets; Cowper, Ossian, Pope and Young round out the eighteenth century; earlier works include Chaucer, Milton and Spenser.

Load more

  55

Copy Link