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Evelyn Waugh

Jane Austen in Austin: A Regency display on view

April 16, 2014 - Harry Ransom Center

Photo illustration by Janine Barchas.

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mansfield Park, Jane Austen’s most ambitious and controversial novel. To celebrate both the author and the cultural history behind this complex work, students in English Professor Janine Barchas’s fall 2013 graduate seminar curated two display cases relating to Austen and her culture. Below, students Chienyn Chi, Dilara Cirit, Gray Hemstreet, Brooke Robb, Megan Snell, and Casey Sloan share some of the items displayed.

 

From family correspondence to uniquely inscribed copies of the novels, the Jane Austen items held by the Harry Ransom Center allow us a rare and intimate view of this beloved author. Georgian fashion plates, landscape illustrations, and other Regency-era artifacts further help to illuminate the culture in which Austen lived and wrote. This display can be seen during reading room hours through May 30.

 

One case contains items relevant to the world described in Mansfield Park, first advertised as published on May 9, 1814. In telling the story of the modest and physically fragile Fanny Price, Austen created a complex and challenging work that critics often contrast unfavorably with the more popular Pride and Prejudice, in which the heroine is pert and talkative. Austen herself judged Pride and Prejudice “rather too light & bright & sparkling.” In Mansfield Park, Austen alludes to the vogue for large-scale “improvements” by popular landscaper Humphry Repton, sentimental drama and theater culture, and the Royal Navy’s role in the Napoleonic Wars. Such references reveal Austen’s awareness of the large cultural concerns of her day.

 

Joseph Haslewood's "Green Room Gossip" (London, 1809).
Joseph Haslewood’s “Green Room Gossip” (London, 1809). In “Mansfield Park,” Tom Bertram announces that his father’s study “will be an excellent green-room” for private theatricals. At the time that Austen wrote Mansfield Park, the term “green-room” invoked a known genre of theater gossip literature. Mixing fact and fiction, Joseph Haslewood’s “Green Room Gossip” (1809) gathered together stories about the scandalous or comical backstage lives of actors.
David Steel’s "Original and Correct List of the Royal Navy," Improved (London, 1814).
David Steel’s “Original and Correct List of the Royal Navy,” Improved (London, 1814). Included in the display is a copy of what Jane Austen simply calls “the navy-list,” a monthly publication that affected both her literature and her family. Two of Austen’s brothers served in the British Navy, and her novels “Mansfield Park” and “Persuasion” (1817) feature central characters who pursue naval careers. Although multiple Navy lists were available from different publishers, the “Original and Correct List” associated with the name of David Steel (1763–1803) dominated the market during the years in which Austen’s novels are set. To keep costs low, these small, roughly sewn booklets were printed on thin paper with small margins. For a shilling, even a poor family like the fictional Prices could afford the proud pleasure of seeing a son’s name, or the name of the ship he served on, in the Navy list.
Page from David Steel’s "Original and Correct List of the Royal Navy," Improved (London, 1814).
Page from David Steel’s “Original and Correct List of the Royal Navy,” Improved (London, 1814).
Humphry Repton’s "Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening" (London, 1803).
Humphry Repton’s “Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening” (London, 1803). Celebrity landscaper Humphry Repton (1752–1818) is mentioned by name in “Mansfield Park.” Repton’s watershed “Observations” contains colorful illustrations with unique folding flaps that demonstrate “before and after” images of his impact on numerous landed estates. The front of the book also contains a list of his major clients. The list, a veritable who’s who of the landed gentry, functioned as an advertisement for Repton. Only England’s most wealthy landowners could afford these grand-scale fashionable improvements. The list includes Austen’s cousins, the Leighs of Adlestrop.
Charlotte Mardyn as Amelia in "Lovers' Vows" (n.d..)
Charlotte Mardyn as Amelia in “Lovers’ Vows” (n.d..) After much debate, the characters of “Mansfield Park” choose the popular melodrama “Lovers’ Vows” (1798) for their private theatrical. This print features actress Charlotte Mardyn (b. 1789) as the character of Amelia in a production of “Lover’s Vows” staged one year after the publication of Austen’s novel. In “Mansfield Park,” Amelia is played by the beautiful and brazen Mary Crawford, Fanny Price’s competition for the love of Edmund Bertram. Edmund, who portrays Amelia’s tutor-turned-love-interest in the play, eventually judges Mary to be of inadequately “serious” morals. Mardyn herself went on to earn a notorious reputation for her rumored affair with Lord Byron (1788–1824) in 1815, allegedly provoking a separation between him and Lady Byron. The items on display in the second case suggest that Austen’s legacy cannot easily be separated from the realm of consumer culture. Despite the stubbornly anachronistic image of Austen as a spinster recluse working in isolation in her father’s rectory, she was thoroughly aware of the bustling world of Georgian commerce around her. New innovations in manufacture and technology placed late eighteenth-century England on the brink of economic revolution. Changes in machine production, urbanization, and consumption were speedily overhauling a traditional society based on agriculture. Jane Austen’s novels teem with small-but-knowing references that place her work in this exciting cultural moment of great change. Not only do Austen’s works record shifts in shopping habits and fashion, but her own legacy has, today, become inextricably entwined with popular culture, mass entertainment, and a booming, modern-day market of Austen-related paraphernalia.
A letter from James Edward Austen-Leigh (1798–1874) to Edward Cheney, dated April 14, 1870.
A letter from James Edward Austen-Leigh (1798–1874) to Edward Cheney, dated April 14, 1870. James Edward Austen-Leigh was the nephew of Jane Austen and author of “A Memoir of Jane Austen,” published in 1870. In this letter he thanks a family friend, a Mr. Cheney, for his approval of the biography and goes on to express his struggles in presenting a satisfactory image of his aunt. Austen-Leigh’s expressed anxiety raises questions about a particular representation of Jane Austen passed down from his Victorian era.
A letter from James Edward Austen-Leigh (1798–1874) to Edward Cheney, dated April 14, 1870.
A letter from James Edward Austen-Leigh (1798–1874) to Edward Cheney, dated April 14, 1870.
Fashion plates from "The Ladies' Monthly Museum" (London, 1804).
Fashion plates from “The Ladies’ Monthly Museum” (London, 1804). Flighty characters in Austen’s works are singularly devoted to the conspicuous consumption of fashion, and Jane’s own correspondence with her older sister Cassandra reveals a fond preoccupation with the trivialities of women’s dress. Austen’s characters—and perhaps the author herself—could study contemporary fashion through such magazines as the one shown here. For the reasonable cost of one shilling, “The Ladies’ Monthly” provided short stories, essays, celebrity gossip, detachable embroidery patterns, sheet music, and brightly-colored fashion plates.
Frances Burney’s "Camilla: or, A picture of youth" (London, 1796).
Frances Burney’s “Camilla: or, A picture of youth” (London, 1796). The subscription list prefixed to this 1796 edition of “Camilla” famously contains Austen’s first appearance in print, recorded as “Miss J. Austen, Steventon.” Family legend maintains that the subscription was purchased for Austen by her father. In the eighteenth century, authors like Frances, or “Fanny,” Burney (1752–1840) commonly offered pre-paid subscriptions to raise funds, as publishers often expected up-front payments for printing costs. In addition to receiving a copy of the work, subscribers had the satisfaction of seeing their own names in print in the published subscription list. Lists were organized alphabetically and according to social status.
Evelyn Waugh's copy of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" (London, 1894).
Evelyn Waugh’s copy of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (London, 1894). Known by collectors as “The Peacock Edition,” this object has become an elegant icon for all things Jane Austen and, today, is reproduced on t-shirts, bags, websites, and other bits of delightful pop culture bric-à-brac. Already a widely read work of literature by 1894, this highly stylized publisher’s binding by illustrator Hugh Thomson (1860–1920) was the first book cover to turn “Pride and Prejudice” into eye candy for the middle classes. Inside the book are many more full-page illustrations by Thomson. The Ransom Center’s copy was owned by novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966).

 

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Research + Teaching Tagged With: Charlotte Mardyn, David Steel, Evelyn Waugh, Frances Burney, Humphrey Repton, James Edward Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen, Joseph Haskwood, Mansfield Park, The Ladies Monthly

Researching Austen in Austin: Archival research reveals connections between Jane Austen’s characters and real-life celebrities and politicians

February 5, 2013 - Janine Barchas

Humphry Repton‚ "Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening," Including Some Remarks on Grecian and Gothic Architecture. London: Printed by T. Bensley for J. Taylor, 1803. The hand-colored illustrations have unique folding flaps that show the "before" and "after" views of the changes that landscaper Repton wrought at great estates and at great expense.

Janine Barchas is an associate professor of English at The University of Texas at Austin. Barchas used the Ransom Center’s collections as she conducted research for her book Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity, published this past fall by John Hopkins University Press. She writes about working in the collections and how they guided her research.

Did I do a lot of research for my new book Matters of Fact in Jane Austen in the Harry Ransom Center? You bet! [Read more…] about Researching Austen in Austin: Archival research reveals connections between Jane Austen’s characters and real-life celebrities and politicians

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts, Research + Teaching Tagged With: Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen, Janine Barchas, letters, literature, maps, Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History Location and Celebrity

Postcards from France: Paul Fussell and the Field Service “Form-letter”

August 2, 2012 - Jean Cannon

A standard British Army Field Service Postcard sent from Wilfred Owen to his mother, Susan Owen, on April 5, 1917.

May 23, 2012, marked the passing of literary scholar and public intellectual Paul Fussell, whose monumental 1975 study of World War I, The Great War and Modern Memory, brought widespread attention to how the experience of trench warfare helped foster a modern, ironic sensibility that still influences art and culture today. Fussell’s book was the first in-depth study of the cultural legacy of the First World War and remains a landmark in the scholarship of early twentieth-century literature. As critic Vincent Sherry has written, the book’s “ambition and popularity move interpretation of the War from a relatively minor literary and historical specialization to a much more widespread cultural concern. [Fussell’s] claims for the meaning of the War are profound and far-reaching . . . . [he] has set the agenda for most of the criticism that has followed him.”

Staff members who are working on the Ransom Center’s 2014 centenary exhibition Looking at the First World War have certainly found Sherry’s claim for the importance of Fussell’s influence to be true. Fussell, a former patron of the Ransom Center, centered his work on many of the British trench poets and writers whose manuscript collections are held at the Center. The Great War and Modern Memory frequently refers to the poem drafts, letters, and diaries of writers such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Edmund Blunden. Fussell maintained that these writers—all of whom were young officers in the trenches of the Western Front—developed a new and often satiric poetic language that served to subvert the “official” rhetoric that was used by the British government and army. Combining biting irony with graphic descriptions of newly industrialized warfare—gas attacks and machine guns, for example—the Generation of 1914 sought to tell the public the eyewitness truth about modern combat.

Numerous items that will be on display in the upcoming exhibition highlight Fussell’s observation that the First World War, as a watershed moment of the twentieth century, inspired soldier-poets to produce deeply personal accounts of their combat experience—often in direct response to government and army propaganda. One of The Great War and Modern Memory’s most memorable examples of the division between the “official” language of the War and the literary response to trench life is Fussell’s discussion of the standardized “Field Service Postcard” issued by the British Army in November 1914. Known as “Quick Firers,” these postcards were mass-produced in the millions and issued to infantry servicemen who would send them to family and friends as evidence of being alive and safe.

The Ransom Center’s Wilfred Owen collection houses more than a dozen of the Field Service Postcards that the young poet-officer sent his family while on active duty in France during 1916–18. As you can see from this image of a postcard sent by Owen to his mother in 1917, the card forces the sender to report his well-being by choosing between uniform, pre-printed sentences: “NOTHING” written in the margins of the card is allowed, or else the card will be destroyed instead of sent. Thus, soldiers such as Owen faced what Fussell refers to as the “implicit optimism” of the Field Service Postcard: they were forced to report that they were “quite well, “going on well,” or were to be “discharged soon” and happily sent back home. The standardized sentences of the card did not allow soldiers to report, for example, that they were facing an artillery barrage, had lost limbs, or were wounded beyond hope of recovery. Owen, who detested the army’s censorship, made an agreement with his mother that if he were advancing to the front lines of battle he would send her a Field Service Postcard with the sentence “I am being sent down to base” struck out twice. The double strikeout is apparent in this postcard, sent just days before Owen was transferred to the Somme region of France, where he participated in some of the heaviest fighting of the War.

 

In the years following the Great War, the Field Service Postcard, which Fussell calls the first widespread “form” letter, would be spoofed by poets and writers wishing to point out the lack of humanity in these standardized communications. As discussed in a blog post by Rich Oram, the Ransom Center’s Edmund Wilson and Evelyn Waugh archives reveal that both men mocked the “form-letter” model when sending or declining social invitations in the postwar period.  This 1929 letter from the poet Edmund Blunden to Siegfried Sassoon, housed in the Ransom Center’s Siegfried Sassoon collection, demonstrates that the memory of the standard Field Service Postcard stayed with soldiers long after the Armistice.

Blunden offers only alternative variations of “well” as a means of describing his mental state and mixes contemporary references with allusions to wartime objects or locations. When listing the possible enclosures of the letter, Blunden offers “H. Wolfe’s Poetical Works” or a “Signed Portrait of H. Williamson” (Humbert Wolfe and Henry Williamson were literary rivals of Blunden’s) alongside a “D.C.M. and Bar” (Distinguished Conduct Medal and insignia for a soldier’s uniform) and a “Silk Card” (an embroidered postcard that was often sent as a souvenir by British soldiers in France to their loved ones at home). Likewise Blunden brackets obsolete military destinations—“base hospital,” a “delousing station,” and “Red Dragon Crater” (a section of No Man’s Land where Blunden endured some of his worst combat experience)—with Lord’s, the famous London cricket ground beloved by both Blunden and Sassoon. In personalizing the “form-letter,” Blunden emphasizes the hollow and automated nature of the Field Service Postcard in its original form. As Fussell reminds us, such gestures of individuality were acts of defiance against the industrialization of war, death, and language during the First World War and its aftermath.

Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory discusses several Great War poets and writers whose archives are housed at the Ransom Center, including Owen, Sassoon, Blunden, Robert Graves, H. M. Tomlinson, and Isaac Rosenberg.

Related content:

Last Letters From World War I Literary Heroes

 

Please click the thumbnails to view full-size images.

 

By previous agreement, Owen’s double strikeout of “I am being sent down to base” indicates that he was headed to the front lines of the Western Front. By late 1918, Owen feared that his mother might misread this secret system of communication and worry unduly: on October 29, 1918 he wrote to Susan Owen, “I don’t want to send Field Cards in case you suppose they mean in the Line. In future . . . a F. Card will be no proof that I am actually there.” He assured his mother he was not headed toward battle. A few short hours after writing the letter, his battalion was moved to the front line of the Sambre-Oise Canal, where nine days later he was killed by a German sniper. Owen’s parents received the news of his death on November 11, 1918, the day of the cease-fire.
By previous agreement, Owen’s double strikeout of “I am being sent down to base” indicates that he was headed to the front lines of the Western Front. By late 1918, Owen feared that his mother might misread this secret system of communication and worry unduly: on October 29, 1918 he wrote to Susan Owen, “I don’t want to send Field Cards in case you suppose they mean in the Line. In future . . . a F. Card will be no proof that I am actually there.” He assured his mother he was not headed toward battle. A few short hours after writing the letter, his battalion was moved to the front line of the Sambre-Oise Canal, where nine days later he was killed by a German sniper. Owen’s parents received the news of his death on November 11, 1918, the day of the cease-fire.
A standard British Army Field Service Postcard sent from Wilfred Owen to his mother, Susan Owen, on April 5, 1917.
A standard British Army Field Service Postcard sent from Wilfred Owen to his mother, Susan Owen, on April 5, 1917.
A letter from Edmund Blunden to Siegfried Sassoon, dated March 30, 1929. Mixing wartime references with inside jokes, Blunden creates a postwar parody of the standard Field Service Postcard issued by the British Army during 1914–18.
A letter from Edmund Blunden to Siegfried Sassoon, dated March 30, 1929. Mixing wartime references with inside jokes, Blunden creates a postwar parody of the standard Field Service Postcard issued by the British Army during 1914–18.

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Research + Teaching Tagged With: Edmund Blunden, Edmund Wilson, Evelyn Waugh, Field Service Postcard, First World War, Paul Fussell, postcards, Siegried Sassoon, The Great War and Modern Memory, Vincent Sherry, Wilfred Owen, World War I

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