AUSTEN, Jane (1775-1815)
AUSTEN, Jane (1775-1815)
Autograph manuscript poem, ‘On the Marriage of Mr. Gell of East Bourn to Miss Gill’, n.p. [Chawton], n.d. [early 1811].
One page, 130 x 112mm. 10 lines in total, comprising a title and two four-line stanzas, written on the verso of a frontispiece leaf cut from the 1810 Minerva Press novel Love, Mystery and Misery by Anthony Frederick Holstein. Modern slip case, half brown cloth over marbled boards, front label in gilt, with protective flaps and silk ties.
An autograph manuscript poem by Jane Austen – a charming testament to her love of wordplay and the comedy of rhyme, probably written for the amusement of her family – with a clear line of provenance that can be traced back to the author herself. A rarity on the market: only two Austen autograph manuscripts have been offered at public auction in the last thirty years and, of the 18 poems attributed to Jane Austen, only six autograph manuscripts – including the present example – remain in private hands.
‘On the Marriage of Mr. Gell of
East Bourn to Miss Gill
Of Eastbourn, Mr. Gell
From being perfectly well
Became dreadfully ill
For the Love of Miss Gill
So he said with some sighs
I’m the slave of your i.s
Ah! restore if you please
By accepting my e.s.’
Provenance:
(1) Cassandra Austen (1773-1845), legatee and executrix of her sister Jane. Cassandra inherited all of Jane Austen’s unpublished literary manuscripts, both finished and unfinished: none of these manuscripts and fragments were published during Cassandra’s lifetime and, following her death, they were divided between Austen family members.
(2) Charles Austen (1779-1852), younger brother of Jane and Cassandra: by descent through his family.
(3) R. W. Chapman (1881-1960), Austen scholar and editor. One of 24 items listed by Chapman in the Times Literary Supplement as part of a ‘considerable collection of manuscripts by or relating to Jane Austen, hitherto preserved in a branch of her family, [and] recently … dispersed’ (‘A Jane Austen Collection’, 14 January 1926). The collection included two copies of this poem, of which Chapman acquired the present one: the second is now in the collection of the Roman Baths Museum, Bath and NE Somerset Council.
(4) Sotheby’s, 14 March 1979, lot 296: sold as ‘Property of a Gentleman’.
(5) Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992), bookseller and bibliophile: offered in Fine Books (1982), from which catalogue it was purchased by the Austen scholar in whose family it has remained.
Jane Austen is thought to have written this light-hearted comic poem after spotting a notice of marriage in a newspaper while at home at Chawton – the most likely candidate would be The Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle – announcing that a Mr Gell of Eastbourne was to wed a Miss Gill of Hackney on Saturday 23 February 1811. Neither the bride nor groom were known to her: it seems she was prompted, amused, to write these verses simply by the oddity of names. Writing verse in response to absurdities one read in the newspaper or those heard as gossip, designed to amuse friends and family members, was a favoured pastime of the gentry- and middle-class, and the Austens were no different: both Jane’s mother and uncle are known to have written similar verse to delight their family.
Many of Jane Austen’s manuscripts were copied out for her family – her parents, her siblings, her nieces and nephews – and her close friends to read and sometimes keep; our manuscript is one of two copies to survive, with a sister held in public ownership, in the possession of Bath and NE Somerset Council. The two versions present small variations in the text; Janet Todd and Linda Bree, editors of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (Later Manuscripts, 2008, pp. 730-732) suggest that our poem is the earlier of the two, on the basis of the less formal presentation, and choose to use it as the copytext. In fact, both manuscripts differ slightly from the first published version of the poem as it appeared in J. E. Austen Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870, p.115): this difference might simply be a result of the editing process or it might indicate that a third copy of the manuscript existed in Jane Austen’s lifetime. Our version is written on the verso of a frontispiece leaf cut from the 1810 Minerva Press novel Love, Mystery and Misery by Anthony Frederick Holstein, which offers some insight into some of Austen’s reading material at Chawton: she read and commented on novels in her letters, often taking particular delight in mocking absurdities in contemporary fiction.
Today, 18 poems that can be confidently attributed to Jane Austen are extant, 13 of which survive as copies in her hand, though this is probably only a smaller proportion of the total written in her lifetime. Five of these poems, including the present example, date from February to October 1811, as she waited at home in Chawton for the publication of Sense and Sensibility, perhaps feeling, as Todd and Bree suggest, ‘particularly ebullient’. The most recent Austen autograph manuscript poem to appear at public auction was at Christie’s in 1991 (16 December 1991, lot 275); only one other autograph manuscript has appeared for sale since then.
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AUSTEN, Jane (1775-1815)
Autograph manuscript poem, ‘On the Marriage of Mr. Gell of East Bourn to Miss Gill’, n.p. [Chawton], n.d. [early 1811].
One page, 130 x 112mm. 10 lines in total, comprising a title and two four-line stanzas, written on the verso of a frontispiece leaf cut from the 1810 Minerva Press novel Love, Mystery and Misery by Anthony Frederick Holstein. Modern slip case, half brown cloth over marbled boards, front label in gilt, with protective flaps and silk ties.
An autograph manuscript poem by Jane Austen – a charming testament to her love of wordplay and the comedy of rhyme, probably written for the amusement of her family – with a clear line of provenance that can be traced back to the author herself. A rarity on the market: only two Austen autograph manuscripts have been offered at public auction in the last thirty years and, of the 18 poems attributed to Jane Austen, only six autograph manuscripts – including the present example – remain in private hands.
‘On the Marriage of Mr. Gell of
East Bourn to Miss Gill
Of Eastbourn, Mr. Gell
From being perfectly well
Became dreadfully ill
For the Love of Miss Gill
So he said with some sighs
I’m the slave of your i.s
Ah! restore if you please
By accepting my e.s.’
Provenance:
(1) Cassandra Austen (1773-1845), legatee and executrix of her sister Jane. Cassandra inherited all of Jane Austen’s unpublished literary manuscripts, both finished and unfinished: none of these manuscripts and fragments were published during Cassandra’s lifetime and, following her death, they were divided between Austen family members.
(2) Charles Austen (1779-1852), younger brother of Jane and Cassandra: by descent through his family.
(3) R. W. Chapman (1881-1960), Austen scholar and editor. One of 24 items listed by Chapman in the Times Literary Supplement as part of a ‘considerable collection of manuscripts by or relating to Jane Austen, hitherto preserved in a branch of her family, [and] recently … dispersed’ (‘A Jane Austen Collection’, 14 January 1926). The collection included two copies of this poem, of which Chapman acquired the present one: the second is now in the collection of the Roman Baths Museum, Bath and NE Somerset Council.
(4) Sotheby’s, 14 March 1979, lot 296: sold as ‘Property of a Gentleman’.
(5) Alan G. Thomas (1911-1992), bookseller and bibliophile: offered in Fine Books (1982), from which catalogue it was purchased by the Austen scholar in whose family it has remained.
Jane Austen is thought to have written this light-hearted comic poem after spotting a notice of marriage in a newspaper while at home at Chawton – the most likely candidate would be The Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle – announcing that a Mr Gell of Eastbourne was to wed a Miss Gill of Hackney on Saturday 23 February 1811. Neither the bride nor groom were known to her: it seems she was prompted, amused, to write these verses simply by the oddity of names. Writing verse in response to absurdities one read in the newspaper or those heard as gossip, designed to amuse friends and family members, was a favoured pastime of the gentry- and middle-class, and the Austens were no different: both Jane’s mother and uncle are known to have written similar verse to delight their family.
Many of Jane Austen’s manuscripts were copied out for her family – her parents, her siblings, her nieces and nephews – and her close friends to read and sometimes keep; our manuscript is one of two copies to survive, with a sister held in public ownership, in the possession of Bath and NE Somerset Council. The two versions present small variations in the text; Janet Todd and Linda Bree, editors of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (Later Manuscripts, 2008, pp. 730-732) suggest that our poem is the earlier of the two, on the basis of the less formal presentation, and choose to use it as the copytext. In fact, both manuscripts differ slightly from the first published version of the poem as it appeared in J. E. Austen Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870, p.115): this difference might simply be a result of the editing process or it might indicate that a third copy of the manuscript existed in Jane Austen’s lifetime. Our version is written on the verso of a frontispiece leaf cut from the 1810 Minerva Press novel Love, Mystery and Misery by Anthony Frederick Holstein, which offers some insight into some of Austen’s reading material at Chawton: she read and commented on novels in her letters, often taking particular delight in mocking absurdities in contemporary fiction.
Today, 18 poems that can be confidently attributed to Jane Austen are extant, 13 of which survive as copies in her hand, though this is probably only a smaller proportion of the total written in her lifetime. Five of these poems, including the present example, date from February to October 1811, as she waited at home in Chawton for the publication of Sense and Sensibility, perhaps feeling, as Todd and Bree suggest, ‘particularly ebullient’. The most recent Austen autograph manuscript poem to appear at public auction was at Christie’s in 1991 (16 December 1991, lot 275); only one other autograph manuscript has appeared for sale since then.
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