2004 Annual General Meeting

Jane Austen Society of North America

October 7-10, 2004
Millennium Biltmore Hotel
Los Angeles, California

Anne Elliot in the City: Interior and Exterior Worlds



PRE-/POST CONFERENCES

Elegant Interiors, Spacious Exteriors: A Day at the Huntington Library
Thursday, October 7, 2004

Join us for an exclusive pre-Conference event at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens on Thursday, October 7, 2004.   This San Marino estate of 150 acres of landscaped gardens, was once the home of Henry E. Huntington, railroad and real estate developer.
Huntington Gallery
Attendees to this event will be transported from the Biltmore Hotel to the Huntington Library shortly after breakfast. The program begins at 10 am in the Friends Hall. There will be three speakers, each focusing on an aspect of the Regency Period that complements the Huntington’s strengths of British art, books, and garden. Coffee and tea will be available throughout the morning.

The first speaker,
Marlyn Musicant, Historian for the Art Department, will address British portraiture in the Georgian and Regency eras. One of the finest groups of full-length British portraits painted between 1775-1800 resides in the Main Gallery. Stephen Tabor, Curator of Early Printed Books, will speak on "The Look of the Book in the Regency." The Huntington owns Robert Bage’s  Hermsprong  from Jane’s personal collection, with her signature in each volume and four letters written by Jane’s brother Henry.  The third talk is entitled "Jane Austen and the Landscape Garden." The speaker is Elizabeth Proudman whom many know already as the outstanding British guide for Jane Austen literary tours.
Japanes Garden
For those with lunch tickets, a delicious luncheon will be served on the Terrace that overlooks sweeping expanses of lawn and shrubbery. For those without, a nice lunch is available at two locations. After lunch, people will then have two hours to explore the galleries and the fragrant gardens. A customized self-guided tour that emphasizes Regency art but also includes some special highlights at the Huntington will be distributed to all attendees. Buses will begin departing after 3:30 pm; the last one will leave at 4:00 pm sharp.



THE HUNTINGTON LIBRARY, ART COLLECTIONS, AND BOTANICAL GARDENS

The elegant Huntington houses one of the world's great research libraries and an outstanding collection of 18th century British art. In addition, the institution includes more than 130 acres of gardens, including the famous rose garden, a Japanese garden, and a Shakespeare garden of blooms mentioned by the bard in his various works. The library specializes in British and American history and attracts nearly 2,000 scholars each year. Among its 600,000 books and three million manuscripts are a copy of the Magna Carta and the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , as well as a Gutenburg Bible printed on vellum. The library also boasts Jane Austen's first edition of Robert Bage's Hermsprong (1796), with her signature in each volume.

The Huntington's handsome Beaux-Arts mansion houses an impressive collection of British and French art from the 18th and early 19th centuries, including Gainsborough's "The Blue Boy," "Pinkie" by Thomas Lawrence, and "Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse" by Joshua Reynolds.

VIRTUAL TOUR

A click on this link will take you to the virtual tours offered on the Huntington Library website.



Perfect Specimens:  UCLA Gardens and UCLA Library Special Collections
Monday, October 11, 2004  9:00 am - 3:00 pm

sculpture garden

Walking Man, by Rodin
UCLA Sculpture Garden

UCLA welcomes you!   In the UCLA Library Special Collections Department you will view an exhibit of UCLA materials, “Jane Austen at UCLA:  First, Early, and Illustrated Editions”, and be treated to two talks by UCLA staff and faculty.  The first presentation will be “Perfect Specimens:  the Sadleir Collection of 19th century Literature,” a slide show by Suzanne Tatian and Claire Bellanti, UCLA library staff.  Dr. Jonathan Grossman, of the UCLA English Department, will talk about the publication history of Persuasion and books in Jane Austen’s time.  A box lunch follows in the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden among perfect specimens of modern sculpture.  A walk across campus will take participants to the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden for a guided tour of 5,000 species of plants. This garden contains one of the most important living botanical collections in the United States, with plant specimens from all over the world and 5000 difference species of plants.