Lots of Anne Lister news
Periodically looking for new books being published — especially with search terms women, biography, England — I recently found Jill Liddington’s As Good as a Marriage: The Anne Lister Diaries, 1836-38. Publication date is scheduled for May 2023 (Manchester University Press).
As Good as a Marriage joins the prior Liddington volumes:
- Nature’s Domain: Anne Lister and the Landscape of Desire – which presents Lister’s 1832 journal entries
- Female Fortune: The Anne Lister Diaries, 1833-36: Land, Gender, and Authority – which fits between the earlier book and the next volume of diaries
Of course Liddington’s publications build upon the Lister diaries published by Helena Whitbread:
- I Know My Own Heart (aka: The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, volume 1) – featuring journal entries from 1816 to 1824
- No Priest But Love (aka The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, volume 2) – the follow-up features Lister’s journals from Paris in 1824
All Lister fans are patiently awaiting Whitbread’s biography of Anne Lister.
At the very least, the paths of Mary Gosling & family and Anne Lister crossed via visits to the Ladies of Llangollen. Both visited Plas Newydd, the home of Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler.
The next piece of news concerns the upcoming ANNA LISTER RESEARCH SUMMIT.
This is a three-day extravaganza features topics like “Shew us the archives”; an update on the Transcription Project; studies of Anne Lister’s Reading Habits; “The Lister Moves”; and “Mining Laughs”. Check out the ENTIRE schedule of offerings on the SUMMIT website – where you can also REGISTER for this FREE conference, which runs October 14-16, 2022 (with videos uploaded to YouTube for those sessions that you miss). They meet over ZOOM and are time-zone friendly.
Saying Goodbye to the Queen
In 1818, Emma Smith noted the death of Queen Charlotte on the 17th of November. Emma’s diary tells us that she put on mourning,on the Sunday following (November 22). What stuck in my mind, and was brought to mind today – the day of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral – were Emma’s words written against the date December 1st:
Tuesday, Dec 1 After much consideration whether we should stay as Mrs Gosling proposed & see the Queen’s funeral at Windsor or go home it was settled that Mamma & Augusta should return to Suttons Wednesday & that I should stay at Roehampton till Monday 7th
Wednesday, Dec 2 Mamma & us besides the Goslings stationed ourselves near Hounslow Heath for the purpose of seeing the procession it was very quiet the hearse seven of the Queens carriages some mourners & a troop of lancers. from thence Mama & Augusta returned to Roehampton they slept there & went the next day to Suttons. I went on with the Goslings to Windsor they had secured a room in the Castle Inn we dined there & about 8 o’clock the procession passed us. the road from the Castle to Frogmore was lined with soldiers every sixth man bearing a flambeau besides some of the cavalry & all the mourners the Regent was Chief Mourner the Dukes of York & Sussex were also present the whole sight was very grand. Mr & Mrs Gosling Elizabeth & Mary & I all laid down in a double bedded room. W:m & Bennett returned to Roehampton
Thursday, Dec 3 The Cavalry was reviewed before our windows. We walked into the Castle but they would not show it then to Eton Coll & returned to Roehampton for dinner
To all those who paid respects
(click to watch BBC broadcast – over 9 hours of coverage)
“First the Music”
In Italian, “Prima la musica, et poi le parole” means “First the music and then the words.” Its underlying meaning shouts the primacy of the composer over the librettist. The one-act opera by Antonio Salieri premiered on 7 February 1786, at Schönbrunn Palace, Vienna, a commission from Emperor Josef II. Premiered the same evening and venue was Mozart’s comedy in one act, Der Schauspieldirecktor (The Impresario).
It was from this evening’s rivalry – for, long ago (LP’s anyone??) I had purchased a recording of one of Mozart’s better-known operas, and the music from “The Impresario” took up the room on the last side of the set – that I took the title for a chapter in a forthcoming book on “Women and Music,” with a focus on Emma Austen’s eldest sister, Augusta Smith. Born in London in February 1799 – so just thirteen years after that night of music in Schönbrunn’s Orangery – Augusta Smith, to me, seems the epitome of The Accomplished Woman, especially when I focus on her musical skills. But: there were so MANY accomplished women in the Smiths’ circle of family and acquaintance. You meet MANY of the young ladies in the chapter, which is entitled, Prima la musica: Gentry Daughters at Play – Town, Country, and Continent, 1815-1825.
Emma Smith
(1820s silhouette)
see also the Carpenter (attributed) portrait at HRO.
See Smith of Suttons, pedigree 2.
Thanks in no small part to covid, the trail this chapter and the work of other contributors to the book, has been lengthy and circuitous. Yet, the publishers who first showed interest back in 2019 has just this past week given the green light to our project! Bucknell University Press will publish Woman and Music in the Age of Austen. I suspect the book will hit stores in time for Christmas 2023.
Watchers of this blog will notice a slight, and very recent, title change – from “Women and Music in Georgian Britain” to “Women and Music in the Age of Austen.” The prior title will bring up several notices, especially by contributors (including me, through Two Teens in the Time of Austen).
In a next post about the forthcoming book, I’ll include a table of contents & contributors. to whet your appetite for more on Women and music in the age of Jane Austen, which “age” runs, of course, from the late 18th century into the 19th century – but Austen herself reached back into the past, before her birth, and her influence continues into our own decades of the 21st century.
The book runs to over 400 pages in manuscript. The hopes of the editors are to make the volume “affordable”.
Stay tuned!!
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 