No Dreaming Spires for Jane!

My latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World Magazine discusses the limited education available for girls and women in late Georgian times. Jane and her sister Cassandra could not go to university like their father George, and brothers James and Henry, who went to St John’s College, Oxford.

Radcliffe Camera, Oxford. 

Girls’ education was designed to prepare them for the marriage ‘market’ and their future lives as wives and mothers. Authors like Mary Wollstonecraft and Catherine Macaulay argued passionately that girls should have as good an education as boys - but no higher education colleges were open to women until over three decades after Jane Austen's death.

Cartoon: ‘Farmer Giles & his wife shewing off their daughter Betty to their neighbours, on her return from school. Gillray, 1809. Courtesy Library of Congress LC-USZC2-3803.

Update 7 March: For some reason none of my replies to comments are showing online - so many thanks to Tony for all the informative comments!

Marks of Genius

Jane Austen's novels on display - Marks of Genius.

I recently visited the new Weston Library's Marks of Genius exhibition at Oxford. It features some wonderful Austen-era treasures. The poet Shelley's notebook, which contains a draft of his poem Julian and Maddalo, is on display, and the travel journal written by Percy and his wife Mary. A miniature portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, and one of the young Shelley, are on view, and a draft of Mary's landmark novel Frankenstein.


An early set of Jane Austen's novels is tantalisingly close to the visitor, and you can also see the manuscript of Jane Austen's unfinished novel The Watsons, and Volume the First, part of her juvenilia (her early works are full of fun).

Austen's Volume the First.

I very much enjoyed the exhibition, which is not limited to Austen's time - you can explore many other fabulous masterpieces from the Bodleian Libray collections, too.

Austen's The Watsons

This free exhibition runs until 20 September 2015, so do make a point of dropping in if you can. If you can't visit, you can buy the exhibition catalogue here.