Katie Childs (Chawton House) talks about the often-hidden role women played in horticulture and botany from as early as the 17th century. This talk, based on a recent exhibition at Chawton House, explores the lives and work of women including the fearless Celia Fiennes, the scandalous Henrietta Knight, the mysterious Miss Smith, and the women who shaped Chawton House's own gardens.

The last event in our 2023 series. We are joined by Author, Journalist, and Food Historian Julienne Gehrer who speaks about Home Cures during the time of Jane Austen.

‘No person could be really well,’ claims Sanditon’s Mr Parker, ‘without spending at least six weeks by the sea every year’. Emma’s Mr Woodhouse disagrees: ‘the sea is very rarely of use to any body.  I am sure it almost killed me once’. This talk explores Jane Austen’s knowing use of the science behind the Georgian and Regency craze for sea bathing.

Between the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar by England in 1752, and the formation of the Royal Astronomical Society by William Herschel in 1820, technologies for the measurement of time and the heavens became increasingly accessible to professionals and amateurs alike. In this talk, astrophysicist Chris Clemens (UNC Chapel Hill) will describe these developments and how they entered into everyday life in England.

In this talk, Zara Anishanslin (University of Delaware) explores the life, labors, and designs of one of London's most fascinating eighteenth-century women, a woman who against all odds achieved success in the male-dominated field of silk production. Enigmatic Anna Maria Garthwaite (1688-1763) was one of early modern Britain’s few women silk designers. She also was one of its most prolific. A clergyman’s daughter with family connections to the Royal Society of London and Chelsea Physic Garden, she had intimate ties to global natural history networks that found aesthetic expression in her technically sophisticated design work. Her popular designs helped foster a craze for wearing botanically-themed fashion around the British Empire.