Professor Jennie Batchelor, Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies in the School of English, will give a talk entitled Jane Austen Embroidery at the Chawton House Lockdown Literary Festival on Sunday 17 May 2020 at 6pm.
Chawton House’s digital Lockdown Literary Festival is a 3 day programme of literary heaven, consisting of talks, discussions and workshops all broadcast direct to your home.
Jennie’s talk will explore Jane Austen and embroidery. We know that Jane Austen was as skillful with a needle as she was with a pen. She was a keen amateur embroiderer who was praised for being so ‘excellent in satin stitch’ that she would have put ‘a sewing machine to shame’. Jane’s letters document her embellishing caps and gowns while trying and failing to guard the patterns so that her friends couldn’t mimic her style. But where she did get her patterns from? The most likely source is the Lady’s Magazine (1770-1832), a hugely successful women’s magazine that Jane Austen read and that for 50 years provided readers with monthly embroidery patterns. In this talk, Jennie discusses her chance discovery of some of these presumed lost patterns and the new book she has written with Alison Larkin, Jane Austen Embroidery (2019).
Jennie’s talk will be followed by a Zoom Q&A.
Further details about the Festival, including a full schedule can be found here:
https://chawtonhouse.org/2020/05/lockdown-literary-festival/