Saturday, 26 November 2022 at 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
‘Verdure is the most Perfect Refreshment’ – Jane Austen & the English Landscape Garden with Dr. Laura Mayer
Landscape – whether real or imagined – nature, & her characters’ response to these inform each & every one of Jane Austen’s novels. Justly famous for her sharp social satire, Austen was also highly attuned to the shifting sensibilities surrounding landscape gardening, which had been gathering pace since the beginning of the eighteenth century. Laura looks at the Bath connection to Austen and discusses the various gardens mentioned, whilst exploring Gilpin’s theories on the Gothic/ Picturesque, the fashion for garden visiting and the connections between Mansfield Park & Humphry Repton.
BIOGRAPHY: DR. LAURA C. MAYER
Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher, with an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century patronage from the University of Bristol. She has published extensively, particularly on Lancelot Capability Brown, and Jane Austen’s contemporary, Humphry Repton. Laura shares Elizabeth Bennett’s appreciation of Gilpin’s picturesque as well as her talent for tramping about a garden inappropriately shod. She has also been known to pen the odd limerick about Fitzwilliam Darcy.
The lecture is being held in the Elwin Room of the Bath Royal Scientific and Literary Institution, Queen Square, Bath. BA1 2HN.
Price for this event £10. Booking through Eventbrite following the link.
Getting there
Use the Park & Ride from: Newbridge, Odd Down and Lansdown all into the City centre and a 5-10 minute walk to Queen Square.
Local Parking: Parking in the Charlotte Street and the Waitrose Podium car parks nearby, also Avon Street and Southgate car parks – (charges apply).
Bath train station and a 15 minute walk to Queen Square
For further information please contact Pater Hills – events@avongardenstrust.org.uk or phone 07748507166