Dancing with Mr. Darcy Part 13

Her arrival in the Hampshire village marked the start of what was to be the most productive period of her literary life. Jane had begun writing many years earlier when her father was the vicar of Steventon. She had produced draft versions of three of her novels including the ma.n.u.script that would eventually become Pride and Prejudice -before she reached the age of 25. But her father's sudden decision to retire and go to live in Bath greatly upset his daughter. Leaving the house where she had been born and seeing her father's extensive book collection sold off, along with many other family possessions, plunged her into depression and effectively disabled her as a writer.

The following decade was spent moving from one rented house to another, first in Bath and later following her father's death in Southampton. During this period the prolific output of fiction she had produced during the 1790s came to a grinding halt. It was only when her brother Edward offered her a permanent home in what had been the Bailiff's cottage on the Chawton estate that she found the peace and security she needed to flourish as a writer.

Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma and Mansfield Park were all published while she lived in the village. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published posthumously after her death at the age of just 41.

So the Great House, as Edward's Elizabethan mansion was known then, was inextricably linked with Jane Austen's destiny. Her brother provided an environment in which she could thrive and in those last fruitful years she would often make the short walk from her cottage to the grand building that rose above the parish church of Saint Nicholas.

Chawton House had a fine library that was an undoubted attraction to Jane. The house was also the setting for many Austen family gatherings: '...we four sweet Brothers and Sisters dine today at the Gt House. Is that not quite natural?' she wrote to her friend, Anna Lefroy.

The house has recently been restored to its former glory thanks to an American entrepreneur who is a devoted Austen fan. For centuries it was the comfortable country home of the Knight family (it was Thomas and Catherine Knight who adopted Jane's brother, Edward, and he subsequently changed his name to Knight). Following the First World War, however, it fell into decline due to inheritance taxes and ever-increasing running costs the fate of many other country estates in England.

By 1987, when Richard Knight inherited the property from his father, it was on the verge of financial and physical collapse. Its long and distinguished history, from mediaeval manor to one of Hampshire's great country houses, seemed to be drawing to an end. Its a.s.sociations with Jane Austen looked destined to become mere memories.

Five thousand miles away in California, Sandy Lerner, co-founder of Cisco Systems, Inc., learnt of this misfortune. Sandy had discovered Austen while under unbearable pressure as an undergraduate computer science student at Stanford. She read Persuasion and was instantly hooked (she has since read the book more than seventy times).

After floating Cisco in 1990, Sandy and her former husband, Len Bosack, had turned a large percentage of the proceeds over to a foundation dedicated to scientific research, animal welfare and literary endeavours. She realised that Chawton House could be the perfect home for her collection of books by the long-forgotten early English women writers who were Austen's literary mothers and sisters. In Sandy's vision, Chawton House would be the ideal environment for research and study in a manner that would bring to life the social, domestic, economic, cultural and historical context in which the writers lived and worked. In short, a unique opportunity to study the works in an appropriate setting.

From this resolve she acquired a long lease from Richard Knight and began an extensive programme of conservation work. The house reopened in 2003 as Chawton House Library the world's first centre for the study of the lives and works of women writing in English before 1830. As well as an original ma.n.u.script and early editions of Jane Austen's work, authors such as Mary Sh.e.l.ley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Burney and Aphra Behn feature in the collection of more than 8,000 books. The library is open by appointment to members of the public and there are visiting fellowships available for more specialised research.

The Jane Austen Short Story Award was initiated by Chawton House Library to encourage contemporary creative writing. The 2009 compet.i.tion attracted nearly three hundred entries from all over the world. The hope is that two centuries on, a new generation of writers will be inspired by Jane's work and the Great House she knew so well.

Lindsay Ashford, July 2009.

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