Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds first editions of most of Jane Austen's novels. Out of one of them, Emma (1816), comes a contemporary watercolor, unauthenticated and wanting any other indications of provenance but looking very much like other, better-attested representations of Austen. We display all five novels, the portrait, and a small selection of other works of her period. Penn''s collection of pre-1820 English fiction is one of the largest outside the United Kingdom. Students and scholars regularly use it as one means of coming to understand Austen in her own fictional context. Radcliffe, Scott, Southey, and several of the gothic novelists whom Austen read or mentions are on display in this tribute to "Jane Austen's Brothers and Sisters in the City of Brotherly Love," the annual general meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America, held in Philadelphia this October.
free and open to the public (please show photo ID at entrance)
Join Chef Fritz Blank (Deux Cheminées) taking questions on cuisine, collecting cookbooks, and running a restaurant. Chef Blank retired to Thailand in 2007 after nearly thirty years as one of America's foremost French chefs. He is returning to Philadelphia to celebrate the gift of his culinary archive and library to Penn. A selection from his collection is included in the current exhibition Who's Coming to Dinner?.
Rosenwald Gallery (east end), 6th floor, Van-Pelt Dietrich Library Center
University of Pennsylvania, 3420 Walnut Street, Philadelphia
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm
Saturday, by prior arrangement, noon-4pm
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