The religious meditations, verse and autobiographical writings of Katherine Austen : Miscellany 1664-1683.

Format:

Book

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Prophecy.

Vision.

Accounts.

Biography.

Inscriptions.

Dialogue.

Autobiography.

Prayer.

Meditation.

Religious literature--Authorship.

Religious literature.

Title pages.

Twickenham (London, England).

London (England).

Chatham (Kent, England).

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Notes:

AMDigital Reference:Add. MS 4454

Book M is dated 1664 on its title page (fol. 2r), and its contents date predominantly from 1664 to 1666, the sixth through eighth years of Austen's widowhood, when she was aged between 35 and 37. It is labelled 'K. Austen's Miscellanies' on the British Library's binding: it is in Austen's autograph throughout, and it contains religious meditations (frequently on autobiographical occasions), autobiographical notes, family records, and 30-odd poem almost exclusively religious. These contents document Austen's life in this period with remarkable clarity: the disputes concerning Highbury and other family properties are a recurrent focus (see particularly msItems 54-92); the plague of 1665-1666 dominates msItems 120-135; and in msItems 31, 131 and 137-40, Austen considers the relative merits of remarriage and continued widowhood. Throughout, Austen's concern is to consider or interpret these autobiographical events in providential terms, the raison d'être of many early modern women's spiritual diaries (Mendelson, 'Stuart Women's Diaries', pp. 182 and 186). Overall, she sees the hardships of her widowhood in terms of a six-year period of trials, in reference to Job and his deliverance in the seventh year (see biographical article, above). It is clear that Book M once formed part of a series of manuscripts kept by Austen: there are cross-references throughout to books with the letter references A through J, as well as a 'parchment book' and a 'book of brown paper'. That Austen wrote so extensively is indicative of her self-declared fascination with 'ingenuity' (fol. 44v). Her husband and son were Oxford-educated, and while Austen describes herself as 'not a scholar' (fol. 44v), she writes not only extensively in prose, but in verse also. She draws on the writings of Daniel Featley, Jeremy Taylor and other Church of England divines; she also exhibits a fascination with dreams, visions and prophecies, documenting well-known anecdotes of dreams and visions, and considering her own dreams and their prophetic meanings. Her 'Dream of Monition' provides an insight into her purpose in writing: 'that I shall not die but live, and declare the works of the Lord' (fol. 21r). Her verses, while largely in undistinguished rhyming couplets, evidently take their inspiration from the Psalmist David: they are for the most part responses to personal tribulations, and meditation on the Psalms translates directly into the composition of original verses in cases such as msItems 60-61. 'On the Situation of Highbury' is the only secular verse in Book M and has been the subject of some critical discussion: Pamela Hammons has seen it as indicative of Katherine Austen's 'self-figuration as a gentlewoman poet' (Hammons, 'Country-House Innovations', Poetic Resistance, and 'Widow, Prophet and Poet', and see Ross, 'And Trophes of his praises make'). Certainly, Book M suggests that Austen may have had contact with verse in seventeenth-century manuscript culture (see msItem 93). Given this social context, and the upwardly-mobile, if precarious, status of her family, her use of verse to commemorate the estate so vital to her family's social standing does appear significant; the social and intellectual connotations of writing in the poetic form are emphasised. Fol. 4v of Book M contains an address to the reader, declaring that 'Whosoever shall look in these papers and shall take notice of these personal occurrences will easily discern it concerned none but myself, and was a private exercise directed to myself. The singularity of these conceptions doth not advantage any'. Austen's protestations notwithstanding, Book M clearly does have an intended audience, if only among family and acquaintances. On the occasion of Austen travelling to Essex at the height of the plague in 1665, she composes individual advice and legacy pieces to each of her children, and to all three together, signing and dating them with the clear intention of giving them an 'official' status (msItem 135). Book M also contains other advice pieces to her children, and an address to her sister on its final page. Austen's Book M is usefully compared to the manuscripts of Alice Thornton: like those, it offers a picture of 'mid-seventeenth-century gentry squabbling over their estates-pie' (George, p. 173); it is a providential reading of a seventeenth-century woman's life; and it may well have been circulated amongst friends and acquaintances as a defence or proof of the writer's honour (see Wilcox for a discussion of Thornton in this light). It seems likely that Austen intended the manuscript for perusal - or at least assumed it may be perused - against the background of her very public defences of her family's fortunes. Most curiously, many but not all of the poems contained in Book M are consecutively numbered. Such numbering may indicate a process of selection, for poems perhaps to be extracted for presentation in another, more formal volume. No other of Austen's manuscripts are extant. Beal (1987-93); Beaven (1908); Bennett (1955); Dale (1931); Foster (1891); George (1988); Hammons (1999); Hammons (2000); Hammons (2001); Hammons (2002); Houlbrooke (1988); Howard (1880); Johnson (1914-22); Liu (1986); Mendelson (1985); Mendelson (1998); Pearl (1964); Records of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn (1896); Ross (2004); Todd (1985); Todd (1995); Victoria County History of Middlesex vol. 8 (1985); Wilcox (1992);