Tag: literature

  • Using Personal Sources: Jane Austen’s Letters

    Using Personal Sources: Jane Austen’s Letters

    Eleanor Doyle, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on one of Jane Austen’s letters to her sister Cassandra for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Eleanor discusses how we can use personal sources such as this to understand more about an author’s personal relationships as well as wider contemporary experiences. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.

    Jane Austen’s reputation as a celebrated English novelist is well established. However, her letters to her sister, Cassandra Austen, provide a rewarding insight into her as an individual. This blog will focus on a letter Jane sent to her sister in September 1813. [1] Studying Jane through her own words seems particularly appropriate when considering Robert Liddell’s view that her novels, such as Pride and Prejudice, were “her true form of expression.” [2] However, this identifies a significant academic debate: Liddell prioritises the value of Jane’s novels, while Elaine Bander and Robert Chapman argue that the letters reveal personal aspects of Jane. [3] This blog favours the latter interpretation and will demonstrate how this letter makes it possible to understand and value Jane’s relationship with Cassandra, as well as helping us to learn significantly about Jane and her close female friends’ attitudes to fashion and clothing.  Therefore, while the limitations of this letter will be discussed, this blog maintains that it offers a unique perspective into Jane Austen’s life.

    Portrait of Jane Austen (c. 1810) by her sister Cassandra

    The value of this letter cannot be understood without recognising the author’s relationship with the intended reader, Cassandra. The first sentence acknowledges it is a reply to Cassandra’s letter and that this letter, written “after dinner” follow’s Jane’s earlier reply. [4] Although a single letter cannot be used to prove a pattern, Elaine Bander recognises that the sisters wrote to each other two or three times a week. [5] Furthermore, the frequency and content of their letters suggests a close bond between the two sisters. Mary August Austen-Leigh notes that they were educated together since time apart from her “beloved sister” would have “broken her [Jane’s] heart.” [6] This close bond is best evidenced in this letter in the thoughtfulness Jane demonstrates in waiting to hear if her sister likes the colour of ‘the Gown’ she sent to her. [7] Furthermore, Carol Houlihan Flynn notes that the ease and informality with which Jane wrote to her sister, using dashes to “casually break up endless paragraphs” confirms their deep bond. For example, Jane’s discussion of the new caps she and Fanny bought is immediately followed by concern for her brother Henry. [8] Since these two matters have no apparent link, the seemingly chaotic structure of this letter should be understood, as Joan Rees notes, as evidence of the relationship “between two close and affectionate sisters.” [9] This demonstrates, therefore, that Jane’s letters offer an insight into her relationship with her sister that could not be understood through reference to her novels alone.

    The letter’s content also reveals a greater understanding of contemporary attitudes to fashion and clothing. There are numerous references made to items of clothing throughout the letter such as ‘gowns’, ‘caps’, ‘stockgs’ (stockings), and “a white silk Handkf” (handkerchief). [10] However, this letter provides more than a list of popular items. It also identifies that some items such as the caps were made elsewhere since Jane records their arrival, along with their descriptions: such as “white sarsenet and Lace”. [11] However, because Jane discusses being “tempted” by some ‘Edging” and purchasing “some very nice plaiting Lace”, as well as mentioning Fanny buying “Net for Anna’s gown”, it can be inferred that at least some of their clothes were made by the women. [12] This is confirmed by Sarah Tytler, who praises Jane’s needlework skills as having “exquisite finish”; a view also echoed by Hilary Davison. [13] Therefore, this letter strongly suggests that Jane and her close friends were involved in making their own clothes. As Davison has noted, this is very difficult to evidence by using a material culture approach alone. This, then, demonstrates the value of personal sources to resolve issues in studies of material culture. However, the frequency with which fabric and style are discussed suggests that Jane’s letters could also be used as a means by which to investigate contemporary fashion. Claire Tomalin recognises that Cassandra and Jane often wrote to each other about fashion and fabrics. [14] Therefore, it would be appropriate to conclude that these letters provide a unique insight into the activities of Jane and her close female friends. The insight provided into Jane’s life as a relatively wealthy woman in the early nineteenth century is significant and identifies areas for further investigation.

    Finally, it has been demonstrated that this single letter reveals more about the life of Jane Austen than might be expected, and thus deserves further consideration by academics. Fittingly, Roger Sales argues that the collection of Jane’s letters remains “the single most neglected historical source for this period”. [15] However, it must also be recognised that this letter, and the collection it belongs to, has limitations. Firstly, as has been discussed, this letter, along with the majority of other letters compiled by Chapman, were sent to Cassandra, who edited and destroyed parts of Jane’s letters before she passed her collection on. [16] Consequently, it is impossible to know whether valuable letters were lost. However, it is arguable that Cassandra’s editing is further evidence of her close relationship with Jane and perhaps an attempt to censor or to highlight what she considered to be important. [17] Since their letters reflect their personal relationship it is possible that she believed some of the content to be unimportant or too sensitive to be read by others. Sales’ view that the letters allowed Jane and her contemporaries to “lose the ‘countenance’” expected of them in public would support this view. [18] It is unwise to suggest that a true idea of Jane Austen can be understood through her letters. As Marian Dobson has recognised, most academic opinion suggests letters offer a place for the individual to discuss their feelings rather than show their true self. [19] Rees has also acknowledged (in the case of Harold Nicolson) that much academic criticism has focused on the lack of interesting content in such letters. [20] An example of this is perhaps the “Eighteen pence due to my Mother” than Jane encloses. [21] However, the more recent historiographical shift to focusing on the ‘mundane’ and valuable ‘nothingness’ in these letters to help explain wider contemporary experiences is highly important. [22] The findings of this blog about Jane’s letter have indeed shown that the seemingly small or insignificant details, such as the lace she bought, actually offer important insights into her life. [23]

    This analysis of Jane Austen’s letter to her sister demonstrates that this personal document allows us a deeper understanding of Jane’s life. This letter offers specific detail on Jane’s relationship with her sister and illuminates aspects of Jane’s experience of fashion and clothing. Although our understanding of Jane Austen would greatly benefit from a comparative analysis studying all of her letters, this work has shown that her life is more richly understood by using her private letters to her sister.

     

    Notes

    [1] Jane Austen, “Thursday 16th September 1813,” R.W. Chapman, Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others, volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), 325-328.

    [2] Elaine Bander, “Jane Austen’s World: Jane Austen’s Words,” Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal 37 (2015): 186; Robert Liddell, The Novels of Jane Austen (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1963), 143.

    [3] Bander, “Jane Austen’s World,” 186; R.W. Chapman, Jane Austen Facts and Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948), 1-2.

    [4] Austen, “Thursday 16th September 1813.”

    [5] Bander, “Jane Austen’s World,” 187 -188.

    [6] Mary August Austen-Leigh, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen (London: John Murray, 1920), 21.

    [7] Austen, “Thursday 16th September 1813.”

    [8] Ibid.

    [9] Joan Rees, Jane Austen: Woman and Writer (London: Robert Hale & Company, 1976), 52.

    [10] Austen, “Thursday 16th September 1813.”

    [11] Ibid.

    [12] Ibid.

    [13] Sarah Tytler, Jane Austen and Her Works (London: Cassell, Petter Galpin & Co, 1880), 11. Quoted in Roger Sales, Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England (London: Routledge, 1994), 4;  James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections, ed. by Kathryn Sutherland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 77. Quoted in Hilary Davison, “Reconstructing Jane Austen’s Silk Pelisse, 1812-1814,” Costume 49, no.2 (2015): 211.

    [14] Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 112.

    [15] Sales, Jane Austen and Representations, xiv.

    [16] R.W. Chapman, Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others, volume 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932); Carol Houlihan Flynn, “The Letters,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen ed. Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 100; Rees, Jane Austen: Woman, 13; Robert Liddell, The Novels of Jane Austen (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1963), 145.

    [17] Houlihan Flynn, “The Letters,” 100.

    [18] Sales, Jane Austen and Representations, xiv.

    [19] Miriam Dobson, “Letters” in Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History, ed. by Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Zieman (Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 60.

    [20] Harold Nicholson, Report Jane Austen Society (1948). Quoted in Rees, Jane Austen: Woman, 52.

    [21] Austen, Thursday 16th September 1813.

    [22] Dobson, “Letters,” 58-60; Houlihan Flynn, “Letters,”110-113.

    [23] Austen, “Thursday 16th September 1813.”

    Source: Austen, Jane. “Thursday 16th September 1813,” R. W. Chapman, Jane Austen’s Letters to her sister Cassandra and others Volume 3, 325-328. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932.

     

    Eleanor Doyle is President of the University of Portsmouth Students’ Union History Society.

  • ‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

    ‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

    Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal Cultural and Social History on the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here.

    Abstract: In 1942 a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified during the Second World War. The public library service was utilized by civic leaders, library officials and publishing trade personnel to aid the country’s war effort. The article argues that negative attitudes regarding mass reading tastes remained largely static, despite recognition that the conflict drew people to the written word for relaxation and escapism. Using the naval city of Portsmouth as a case-study, this article charts the activities of the city’s public library authorities and the borrowing habits of its readers to reveal that while many people borrowed books in order to distract themselves from the conflict, the city’s strategic importance ensured that many citizens also read in order to facilitate their preparedness for war service, whether that be on the home front or overseas. The article argues that while, in common with national trends, many of Portsmouth’s citizens used libraries to obtain books to help distract them from the war, many remained eager to make use of the service for educational purposes, unlike the majority of the nation’s library users, whose interest in this aspect of library provision rapidly waned as the war progressed. The article concludes that the public library service was viewed as a central plank in the war effort and that library officials worked continuously to ensure that it remained so.

     

     

  • “Literature acknowledges no boundaries”: Book reading and social class in Britain, c.1930-c.1945

    “Literature acknowledges no boundaries”: Book reading and social class in Britain, c.1930-c.1945

    An article on book reading and social class by Dr Robert James, senior lecturer in history at Portsmouth, has recently been published in the Journal of Social History. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here.

    Abstract Sitting down to read a work of fiction was a well-established leisure activity within British society by the early-twentieth century but one that was mainly enjoyed by the country’s more leisured classes. After the First World War, however, changes to the publishing industry’s working practices, coupled with the growth of the “open access” system in public libraries in the 1920s and the spread of twopenny libraries in the 1930s, created a new type of reader, drawn principally from the country’s working-class communities. This article reveals that the spread of the working-class book-reading habit prompted a series of discussions among the country’s cultural elites, publishers, and public and commercial librarians regarding how that social group engaged with the written word. Many of these commentators were highly disparaging of the working classes’ reading and book-borrowing habits and, based on a prejudiced understanding of that social group’s cultural capital, sought to influence the types of reading material available to them, particularly with regard to what was accessible in the country’s public libraries. The article argues that while the outbreak of the Second World War may have tempered these discussions somewhat, class distinctions surrounding the reading habit continued to shape people’s participation in it, thus revealing that even during a period when class divisions were supposedly blurring, attitudes toward social class and leisure remained essentially unchanged.

  • Intersecting port cities: PTUC members collaborate with the Port Cities Research Centre, Kobe, Japan

    Intersecting port cities: PTUC members collaborate with the Port Cities Research Centre, Kobe, Japan

    In June, four members of the history team at Portsmouth participated in a series of field trips, presentations, and workshops with academics from Kobe University in Japan. In this blog, one of the founding members of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures research group, Dr Rob James, who is a senior lecturer in history, discusses the visit and what potential future opportunities the collaboration promises.

    As part of our goal to extend links with other institutions worldwide, four members of the University’s Port Towns and Urban Cultures (PTUC) project, Dr Mel Bassett, Professor Brad Beaven, Dr Karl Bell and Dr Rob James, travelled to Kobe, Japan in late-June to meet scholars from the Port Cities Research Centre (PCRC) at Kobe University. The aim of the visit was to both collaborate on port city research and explore research interests between Portsmouth’s and Kobe’s academic communities. Both universities have strong research interests in history, literature, sociology, politics, education and languages, and during the visit we realized that there were great opportunities for working together.

    The PTUC crew at the ‘Intersecting Port Cities’ workshop

    On the first day of the visit members from PTUC and PCRC gave presentations on their various research areas at the Intersecting Port Cities. Kobe and Portsmouth. Their History and Potentialities workshop. This provided a chance for each of us to familiarize ourselves with both groups’ research interests and start to think about ways we could develop future collaborations. While both Kobe and Portsmouth are port cities, they are very different in terms of their history and social composition. Portsmouth is a city with deep naval roots, but Kobe’s port is more industrial, with strong commercial links to large manufacturers such as Kawasaki. Due to its broader industrial base, Kobe is a wealthier city, but we learned that pockets of deprivation still existed, particularly in areas with a strong immigrant community. Despite these economic and social differences between the ports, both operated (and still do) as contact zones in which people from differing cultures meet and mix. Both are waterfront cities at the intersection of maritime and urban space, offering the chance of cultural exchange that both reinforces and challenges local, national and international boundaries. The comparative histories of Kobe and Portsmouth discussed in these workshops thus helped us hone our methodologies and understanding of port cities in general.

    Rob James presenting at the ‘Intersecting Port Cities’ workshop

    Although these research workshops focused on a comparative analysis of port cities, it became clear from our discussions that there was the potential to work together on themes such as citizenship, ethnicity, ‘race’, education, translation and cultural transmission between East and West. All of these areas could involve academics from a range of disciplines at each university, and plans have been put into place to link researchers from both universities’ various faculties. For example, Rob James’ research into the cinema culture of ports links well with the work being conducted by postdoctoral researchers at Kobe University, so plans are afoot to work on collaborative projects in which the cinema cultures of Kobe and Portsmouth are compared and contrasted. After this thought-provoking workshop we were treated to dinner on the Luminous Kobe II pleasure cruiser, and while we sailed around the city’s harbour, eating an array of delicious food from sushi to Kobe beef, our PCRC partners continued to share fascinating stories about the development of the port of Kobe and its rich industrial, economic and social-cultural histories.

    During the following days we engaged in a variety of trips to areas of historical interest, such as Kobe’s theatre district and ‘foreign quarter’, the Kobe Centre for Overseas Migration and Cultural Interaction, and the Kobe Planet Film Archive. These visits allowed us to see how identities in Kobe have been shaped and negotiated, especially through the city’s economic migration and its industries’ working communities. The visits also gave us a fascinating insight into how the city has changed over time, particularly the ways in which the ebbs and flows of the economy have affected the city’s cultural development. Indeed, while walking around the city, it became clear to us that the mapping project we have established at Portsmouth (that tracks the development of its ‘sailortown’ culture) could also be rolled out in Kobe. Such a task would enable the diverse and multilayered heritage of Kobe to be captured and shared with anyone interested in understanding the port’s history. As well as being taken on these very informative trips covering the city’s history, we were also introduced to the various outreach activities with which PCRC’s members are involved, including the Kobe Foreigners Friendship Centre and Takatori Community Centre, where we were told about the ways in which minority communities have been given a ‘voice’ in the broader Kobe community. We also visited Kobe City Archive and were introduced to many archival sources, including newspapers and trade directories, that showed us what a wealth of material there is available for us to use to enable us to further explore the port’s history while working collaboratively with academics at Kobe University.

    Kobe theatre district

    In fact, many opportunities for collaboration were discussed across the four days of the workshops, and it was at the final workshop session where both research groups put forward areas where we had identified real prospects for working together in the future. There was very clear potential to develop interdisciplinary projects that will showcase the research of both of our centres on the international stage. We also recognized opportunities to submit large funding bids to research councils that would allow us to fuse PTUC’s European port town network with the Asian consortium of universities, and thus help us to further explore the relationship between urban and maritime societies. In addition, we made initial plans for an international conference to be held jointly by the two centres, with plans for publications arising from the papers presented. We are also aiming to start a collaborative research project on Japanese culture and the West.

    Kobe port from aboard the pleasure cruiser ‘Kobe Luminous II’

    Overall, our visit to Kobe helped us to establish strong links with Asia, and particularly Japan, allowing us to solidify the port towns’ methodology while also establishing collaborative ways that the University of Portsmouth’s PTUC group could work with its new partner. Indeed, in discussions with our Kobe University colleagues, we have also identified opportunities for exchanges for both academics and students between the two institutions. We’ll keep you posted with future developments!

    PTUC would like to thank the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, an organization that aims to support closer links between the UK and Japan, for its generous financial contribution to this trip.

    Brad Beaven, Karl Bell, and Rob James are founding members of PTUC. Their edited collection Port Towns and Urban Cultures: International Histories of the Waterfront, c. 1700-2000 is available to purchase from Palgrave MacMillan http://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137483157

    All images author’s own.