£5. Book here.
Find out how walking is a revolutionary act for women in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton.
A conversation between Libby Tempest (Gaskell Society) and Lizzie Dunford (Jane Austen House) about whether walking is a revolutionary act for women in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton. A first edition of Mary Barton and an early edition of Pride and Prejudice from the Portico Library’s collection will be available for viewing.
This is a partnership between Elizabeth Gaskell House, Jane Austen House and the Portico Library as part of the Portico’s Walking / Writing and Rambling / Reading series of events.
Libby Tempest has been Chair of the Gaskell Society since 2017. She previously ran the Art & Music Libraries in Manchester Central Library and the much-missed Language & Literature Library which contained one of the best Gaskell collections in the UK. She is a volunteer at Chetham’s Library, The Portico and Elizabeth Gaskell’s House.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s House was home to ‘one of the greatest female novelists of all time’. Elizabeth Gaskell is best known for writing the novels Cranford, Ruth, North and South and Wives and Daughters, as well as the biography of her friend Charlotte Brontë. Today Manchester’s very own literary house is a truly hands-on experience that will introduce you to the world of the writer and her family through historic period rooms, Victorian style garden, expert guides and changing exhibitions.
Lizzie Dunford is the Director of Jane Austen’s House, the final home of the globally beloved author and the birthplace of all six of her era-defining and influential novels. Jane Austen’s house is in the little Hampshire village of Chawton, and Lizzie enjoys her walks through the fields and footpaths of the South Downs as much as Austen did. A trained conservator, and experienced museum leader, Lizzie has worked in the museums and heritage sector for over 15 years, with a focus on house museums.
Jane Austen’s House is the most treasured Austen site in the world. In this inspiring cottage in Hampshire, Jane Austen lived for the last eight years of her life. Here her genius flourished and she wrote, revised and had published all six of her globally beloved novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.