A Library of Their Own: Women Writers at Chawton House

Towards the end of Jane Austen’s final complete novel, Persuasion, the heroine Anne Elliot laments stereotypes of women in fiction, noting ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.’ In fact, the pen was very much in women’s hand. 

The 4,500 books in the library at Chawton House – all written by women – tell a different story about women’s literary history: in the 18th and 19th centuries, the literary marketplace was thriving with women writers. These women published under their own names, worked professionally, and earned respectable incomes while engaging with the pressing issues of their time in their work. Contrary to the common belief that women struggled to get their work published, had to hide behind pseudonyms, or were silenced by society, Jane Austen was part of…