Blogs & News

: Online Event: Wives and Daughters V Mansfield Park – The Domestic Novel

Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell are two of the nation's best-loved authors. Rightly lauded for their classic works, they are often depicted as writing about marriage and the narrow social confines of women's lives. Now, we look at them afresh as we explore the 'domestic novel' of the 19th century. Many Georgian and Victorian stories focused on the life of girls from the gentry, or middle-classes, and the minutiae of their daily lives. Austen's classic novel Mansfield Park

: Online Event: Women Writers – An International Conversation

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Emily Carr and L.M. Montgomery were women writers whose work and art reflected their time and sense of place. So how did they engage with the wider world? What were the international influences on their writing? How did cross-Atlantic themes impact their writing and do they still speak to us today? To mark International Women’s Day, we’re looking at four cherished women writers, Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell from the UK and L.M. Montgomery

: Online Event: Villette V Ruth: Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell

Charlotte Brontë is a giant of Victorian literature and the much-loved author of the classic Jane Eyre, but what of her last novel to be published during her lifetime, Villette, about the passion and pain of unrequited love? Brontë’s semi-autobiographical book Villette tells the story of Lucy Snowe as she flees England for a Belgian boarding school. Her tale of heartache and adversity contrasts with that of Ruth, a novel about an unmarried mother written by Charlotte’s friend

: Online Event: Female Friendship in Literary Lives – ‘Friendship is certainly the finest balm’

Join our four literary houses in an evening to celebrate female friendships to mark International Women's Day. We’ll be looking at the influence these relationships had on the works and in the lives of some of Britain’s most loved writers.  A partnership event with Jane Austen's House, Bronte Parsonage Museum and Chawton House. Jane Austen and Madame Lefroy One of Jane Austen’s dearest friends was her Hampshire neighbour, Mrs Anne Lefroy. Although she was 26 years older than Jane

: Online Talk: Charles Darwin – Literary Science in Wives and Daughters

Elizabeth Gaskell’s final novel Wives and Daughters explores the Victorian interest in science and logic through the character of Roger Hamley and the gentleman scientist Lord Hollingford. Roger was heavily based on the famous evolutionary scientist, and author of The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin. Wives and Daughters was Darwin’s favourite novel and he had it re-read to him on his deathbed. Discover how Elizabeth’s knowledge of the public debates around science influenced her storytelling in her