The work of Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis, a first edition of whose The Duchess of La Valliere (1804) will be exhibited at ‘ Emma at 200’, was widely translated and her works serialized at length in the Lady’s Magazine. The magazine also featured and was widely read by well-known predecessors and contemporaries of Austen. The magazine also encouraged word play, and the kind of games that generate so much misunderstanding in Emma owe more than a small debt to the enigmas published in the Lady’s Magazine and other rival publications. It printed song sheets for much of its run as well as monthly embroidery patterns. The magazine fed, while also being critical of, the appetite to cultivate female accomplishments in the period. The fact that the Lady’s Magazine has found its way into the exhibition – in a room that will be devoted to the arts of music, needlework and painting – is absolutely fitting. Many of the results will soon be on display in a major new exhibition, ‘Emma at 200: From English Village to Global Appeal’, which opens at Chawton House Library next month, to celebrate the 200 th anniversary of the publication of arguably Austen’s best-crafted novel. We have made available 8 of the magazine’s embroidery patterns, which are being recreated, as I type, by dozens of people around the world.

Regular readers of this blog will know that the Lady’s Magazine project is currently running ‘The Great Lady’s Magazine Stitch Off’.

Jane austen by a lady