This Symposium will join the 2025 programme of events marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen.

The Symposium will be held on Saturday 10th May 2025 at Goodenough College, Mecklenburgh Square.

In the face of proposals for its partial redevelopment, in 1938 the Georgian Group campaigned for the preservation of the square, staging a successful fundraising Ball and Fair in the gardens. The Group’s aim was to ensure ‘that as many people as possible may see Mecklenburgh Square as it is now: one of the last perfect examples of Georgian architecture in London’. The Square is perhaps best known as the home of some of the most celebrated writers of the early 20th Century, including Virginia Woolf who lived at no. 37. Sadly, the square was damaged by enemy bombs in 1940.

Programme:

10am: Registration open

10.20am: Welcome from Dr Anya Lucas, Director of The Georgian Group

10.30am-11.45am: First Session

Miriam Al Jamil: A Rural Idyll in Camberwell: Grove Hill, A Descriptive Poem, 1799

Dr Daniela Roberts: Sensual experience of architecture and the impact of Gothic Revival in Anne Radcliffe’s and Jane Austen’s novels

11.45am: Coffee Break

12.15pm-1.30pm: Second Session

Dr Peter Lindfield: Architecture & Architectural Interior Decoration in Austen’s Northanger Abbey

Dr Charlotte Grant: Interiors & Interiority in Austen’s Sense & Sensibility (TBC)

1.30pm-2.15pm: Lunch

2.15pm-3.30pm: Third Session

Dr Karen Lipsedge: What’s race got to do with it?: Interrogating the norms of domestic space, race, gender and social status in ‘The Woman of Colour’, anon (1808)

Dr Sydney Ayers Mercer: The ‘Dark Age’ of Adam Studies: Value and Taste in Architectural Writing

3.30pm-3.45pm: Short Break

3.45pm-4.40pm: Keynote Speaker – Katie Childs: Chief Executive, Chawton House

4.40pm: Closing Remarks – Dr Karen Lipsedge

https://georgiangroup.org.uk/event-directory/symposium-architecture-and-literature-1660-1840/