Jane Austen Collection | Goucher College

Correspondence Between Alberta Burke & David Gilson

A handwritten letter on lined paper written in blue ink and cursive.

One of the hundreds of letters between David Gilson, a librarian at one of the Bodleian Libraries and author of the expansive 1982 Bibliography of Jane Austen, and Alberta Burke. Gilson’s bibliography was so extensive due in large part to the correspondence he maintained with Austen book collector’s worldwide. In this letter, Gilson thanks Burke for offering some of her duplicate […]

The Red Books of Humphry Repton: Attingham Park

A bucolic render with rolling hills, shady trees, a meandering stream surrounded by wild flowers and a stately home in the distance.

Landscape designer Humphry Repton created Red Books for clients with cleverly written proposals and hand-illustrated designs for their English countryside estates. He created over 400 of these Red Books, though only about 100 remain. The books get their name from their red Morocco leather binding. One of the most unique aspects of Humphry Repton’s Red […]

The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, & Politics

The cover of The Repository shows a coat of arms, two roman figures, and an angel playing a trumpet.

The Regency Era is the period from 1811-1820, when George VI, Prince of Wales, governed the United Kingdom by proxy for his ailing father, King George III. Since Jane Austen wrote during this time, Alberta Burke collected works on landscape, architecture, fashion, and more. Commonly called Ackermann’s Repository, this illustrated periodical published articles on the […]

Pride and Prejudice: A Novel

The title page of Goucher's copy of Pride and Prejudice. The title page contains a black and white engraving of two women wearing 18th century dress and holding parasols.

Publisher Richard Bentley purchased the rights to Pride and Prejudice after their initial publication. Bentley reprinted all of Austen’s novels in a more affordable single edition. The engravings on the title page and verso are the first published illustrations of the novel in England. Rare Book Collection PR4034.P7 1833. Special Collections & Archives, Goucher College Library.

Persuasion

Along with this first American edition of Persuasion that Barbara Winn Adams donated to the Goucher College Library is a letter from a bookseller, I.R. Brussel. In the letter, dated April 4, 1947, Brussel relays that he considers Jane Austen the “rarest” of English authors who wrote in the 19th century and that her American […]

Barbara Winn Adams Bookplate

A black and white engravement depicting two men standing beside a stone wall and steps leading to the top of the wall. The man on the right (Alfred Lord Lennyson) points with his cane toward the wall while the second man looks toward the wall.

Barbara Winn Adams’s (1911-1997), who donated over 50 books as well as personal papers and correspondence, is the second largest donor to the Jane Austen Collection at Goucher College. The original book of Winn Adams depicts Alfred Lord Lennyson visiting the harbor wall “the Cobb” at Lyme Regis and insisting on learning where Jane Austen’s […]

A Letter to Percy Muir from Alberta Burke

A letter in black ink, handwritten in cursive by Alberta Burke shows her edits with some words and phrases scratched out and over-written.

Among the correspondence bequeathed to Goucher by Alberta Burke are letters from book dealers and scholars, as well as invoices and receipts for her acquisitions. She did not usually keep copies or drafts of her own letters. An exception is this heavily revised draft of a letter that she wrote in 1948 to Percy Muir, […]

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