The programme for the day is:

• 9:45am – Arrival, tea and coffee
• 10:15am – Welcome by Paul Dryburgh, Chair, British Association for Local History

Literary Landscape

• 10:20am - Jane Austen & Southampton: inspiration for Northanger Abbey & Sanditon? by Dr Cheryl Butler
• 10:30am - Locating Pemberley: The Importance of Place in Jane Austen’s Fiction by Dr Gillian Dow
• 11:10am - Muddy Petticoats and Parasols: Uncovering Jane Austen's experience of walking by Nicola Pritchard-Pink
• 12:15pm – Lunch

Jane Austen Dramatized

• 1:15pm - The Nighttime Economy - The French Street Theatre & The Fitzhughs by Dr Cheryl Butler
• 1:25pm - Dramatizing Jane: Sarah Siddons, Austen’s Favourite Actress by Jo Willet
• 2:05pm - Jane Austen & Character: An Actor’s View by Angela Barlow
• 2:55pm – Break

Letters, Journals, Household Books and Diaries

• 3:05pm - The MAD letter, the Austen Household Book, and the Royal Engagements Pocket Diary by Dr Cheryl Butler
• 3:15pm - Keeping Ladies Pocket Diaries in the age of Austen by Holly Day
• 3:55pm - Southampton and the wider world: The travels of William Ridding by Dr John McAleer
• 4.45 Closing remarks by Paul Dryburgh

Following the conference there will be an optional private viewing of the ‘A Very Respectable Company’ exhibition at the SeaCity Museum between 5pm-6pm. The exhibition includes items loaned from descendants’ family archives, providing new and largely unseen material linked to Austen and her networks, including the Austen Family Household Book.

Speakers

Dr Cheryl Butler is the author of Jane Austen & Southampton Spa and First Impressions: Jane Austen’s Southampton Circle. Cheryl is an Outreach Committee member for the British Association for Local History.

Dr Gillian Dow is Associate Professor of English at Southampton University, and former Executive Director of Chawton House and has published extensively on Austen, and women writers of the eighteenth century.

Nicola Pritchard-Pink has a Masters in Eighteenth Century Studies and specialises in Georgian and Regency social history, literature, landscapes, country houses and women’s domestic music. Her interlude on 'Dibdin and Jane Austen: Musical Cultures of Gentry Women' is included in Oxford University Press' 2018 book Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture.

Jo Willet was a television drama producer for many years. She is the proud recipient of a BAFTA, a Royal Television Society Award and an International Emmy. Her first book, The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu, about the woman who brought smallpox inoculation to the west, was published during the Covid crisis. Her second book, Sarah Siddons: The First Celebrity Actress, was published in 2024

Angela Barlow, in an extensive acting career, has appeared in UK theatres and on television and radio in many classic and contemporary dramas. She now regularly writes and speaks in Britain and the USA about aspects of Jane Austen. Her chapter Jane Austen and the Theatre is included in the Edinburgh University Press’s 2024 publication Jane Austen and the Arts.

Holly Day has a PhD in History from the University of York, and specialises in print culture and life-writing in eighteenth-century Britain. She is a research associate at the Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies in York and is currently revising her thesis for publication as a monograph entitled Mem. to Self: Rise of the Pocket Diary in the Transatlantic Print Trade, 1695-1880. In her spare time she volunteers as a researcher for the National Trust.

Dr John McAleer is Associate Professor of History University of Southampton and former curator of Imperial Maritime History at the National Maritime Museum Greenwich

Booking:

Early Bird Tickets are £25 (this will rise to £28 in early 2025) and include lunch and refreshments. Tickets can be booked directly with the MAST Theatre box office here:

https://www.mayflower.org.uk/whats-on/placing-jane-2025/#synopsis