JANE Austen’s House Museum is to host a talk looking at the lives of women from Jane Austen’s time up until the 20th Century.

Lucinda Hawksley will talk about her book March, Women, March at the Chawton museum, and look at the changing role of women from the 18th to the 20th centuries, as well the social changes which helped to make Britain a more favourable place for women than the country Jane Austen's heroines knew.

Jane Austen, her mother and sister lived in the cottage in Chawton from 1809. It was only the help of her brother Edward, the landowner of the Chawton estate, that gave the women the security of a permanent home.

Jane made use of this world in which women were dependent upon male relatives in her work, but how different would life have been for her heroines in later years? How would a 20th-century Anne Elliot have made use of the vote? What highflying career would a modern Elizabeth Bennet have chosen?

Lucinda Hawksley is the author of more than 20 books including March, Women, March: Voices of the Women's Movement; The Mystery of Princess Louise: Queen Victoria's Rebellious Daughter, and Moustaches, Whiskers and Beards (for the National Portrait Gallery).

Lucinda Hawksley

Basingstoke Gazette:

Lucinda has also written a number of critically acclaimed biographies of the artists Lizzie Siddal and Kate Perugini (née Dickens) and of her great great great grandfather, Charles Dickens.

The talk takes place on Saturday, April 25 at 2pm in the Learning Centre at the museum in Chawton.

Later in the year, Hawksley will also lead a Life Writing workshop at the Museum.

This workshop which will be suitable for anyone who wishes to write about their own or someone else’s life, will look at the process of where to begin, how to extend research and how to structure work, as well as providing an insight into and tips about the publishing industry.

Participants do not need to have any previous writing experience.

Annalie Talent, learning officer at the Museum said: "We have help both prose and poetry events at the Museum before so this Life Writing workshop is something new for us." 

The workshop takes place on Saturday, September 26.

Tickets for both events can be booked by ringing 01420 83262.