Treasures from the Collections

Supplement to the Antiquities of England and Wales Vol VIII
Francis Grose. 1787

Winchester Cathedral
This is the burial place of Jane Austen. She died in 1817 at the age of 41, having created a body of work that has long survived all her contemporaries in readability and popularity. Her humour and her sharp psychological insight into human nature in all its degrees of ridiculousness and self-deception have left us with masterpieces that have long outlived her short and quiet life.
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The Children of the Abbey
Regina Maria Roche. Dublin 1825

Roche was born in Waterford in 1764 but moved to England after her marriage. She published many titles for the sensationalist Minerva Press but died in obscurity back in Waterford at the age of 81. In The Children of the Abbey, Amanda and Oscar Fitzalan are the children of the title, who must suffer many vicissitudes before finding their their fortune. Scotland, Wales and Ireland all figure in the novel which includes the usual mixture of virtuous young people seeking their rightful inheritance against a positive army of villains, male and female and a Scottish ghost. One of the characters, Charles Bingley, rejoices in the same name as Jane’s future husband in Pride and Prejudice.
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The Children of the Abbey
Regina Maria Roche. Dublin 1825

Here is a typical Romantic landscape, complete with crag, moonlight and ruined castle. The two young women walk in the moonlight and discuss their problems, arm and arm, as Caroline Bingley and Elizabeth do in her forced turn around the room in the Netherfield scene in Pride and Prejudice.
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The Vicar of Wakefield
Oliver Goldsmith, London 1914

Here the Vicar's daughters, Olivia and Sophia, have their fortunes told by a gypsy. The book, with its affectionate portrayal of family life, was hugely popular at the end of the 18th century and considered to be part of the canon of English literaure well into the 20th. In Emma, Harriet Smith lists her swain, Robert Martin's reading to the heroine: it includes agricultural reports and The Vicar of Wakefield. Aspects of the novel, including the pretensions of ambitious mother, money problems interfering with the course of true love, and the elopement of a young daughter are all themes replayed in Pride and Prejudice.

The illustrator of this edition is Edmund Joseph Sullivan, a popular British illustrator.
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Helen
Maria Edgeworth. Dublin 1838

Helen in the Lime Walk.
This novel is Maria Edgeworth's final novel, the only one she wrote after her father's death. In it, she is less concerned with teaching a moral, and places more emphasis on the interior life of her characters than she did on her earlier work. Perhaps Edgeworth had by this point in time been influenced by Jane Austen’s psychological rather than heavily moralistic approach to writing? Austen admired Maria Edgeworth and sent her a copy of Emma on the novel's publication.  Read more »

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