Jane Austen All-Occasion Cards
British artist Amanda White has produced a series of notecards and holiday cards featuring her cut paper collages of historic houses of writers and poets. On the back of each card is printed a brief essay relating the dates the author lived in the house, what works were created there, and other information about the location, including what he or she loved about the setting and how it inspired creativity. The entire descriptions from the back of each card can be read below.
Chawton Cottage Caller
This homely building, Chawton Cottage in the village of Chawton in Hampshire, was the home of Jane Austen from 1809 until shortly before her death. It was here she honed her craft and, with the help of her brother Henry, became a published author. She began and completed Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion in Chawton Cottage. With no room of her own in which to write, Jane would settle at a tiny table near the front door writing upon “small sheets of paper which could easily be put away or covered with a piece of blotting paper” should a visitor call.
Jane and Cassandra Austen Tending their Steventon Garden
Steventon Rectory was the Austen family home for the first twenty-five years of Jane Austen’s life. It was here she wrote the first drafts of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey. In 1801 Jane and her sister Cassandra reluctantly took leave of their childhood home when their parents decided to retire to Bath. The house has long since vanished, demolished in 1824 by Jane’s brother Edward after a devastating flood in the area. Nothing now remans but a water pump in what is now a meadow — and tantalizing descriptions of its formal garden, carriage sweep and strawberry beds.
Summer’s Evening, Chawton Cottage Garden
Chawton Cottage was the home of Jane Austen for the last eight years of her life, from 1809 to 1817. After several unsettled years during which Jane had lived in lodgings with her family and confined her writing to her witty letters, the peace and quiet of rural life resulted in an outpouring of creativity. It was here she wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion and revised Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey. She famously wrote in the mornings at a small, discreet table in the dining parlour of Chawton Cottage. But it isn’t difficult to imagine that, given her love of the garden, she would have sat outside writing and revising on warm summer evenings.
4, Sydney Place
Between 1801 and 1806 the novelist Jane Austen resided in Bath with her parents and her sister Cassandra. The move from their home in Hampshire came after their father, the Reverend George Austen, and mother, Elizabeth, decided to retire to the fashionable spa town. Three of those years were spent at this elegant newly built terraced house in Sydney Place. It was situated opposite Sydney Gardens, a leafy pleasure park with a maze, concerts and regular firework displays. It must have provided Jane and Cassandra with plenty to watch from the windows of the first-floor drawing room which commanded a fine view over the gardens.
Artist’s note: “I love: folk art and history, Staffordshire pottery, old textiles and plates, gardens, broadsheet woodcuts, Blake, Douanier Rousseau, Kahlo, Alfred Wallis, Ravilious, Bawden, the Romantic movement, browsing in books, mooching in museums, Sussex, old buildings, cats, the sea... Exhibitions include group and solo shows in the UK, Spain and New York.”
Pack of 8 cards with envelopes, two each of four designs, blank inside; 5” x 7”
SEE ALSO:
Romantic Poets All-Occasion Cards
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