An Interview with Mary Guyatt, Curator at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton

This week we have the pleasure of featuring an exclusive interview with Mary Guyatt, Curator at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. It was here that Jane Austen wrote her last three novels (Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion) as well as where she revised her first three novels, including Pride and Prejudice.

York Notes: Could you tell us about what Jane Austen’s House Museum does, and what your role is within the museum.
Mary Guyatt: I am Mary Guyatt and my role is Curator. I work with our trustees, staff and a large team of volunteers to maintain and develop this unique literary site, and to increase public appreciation of Jane Austen’s life, work and times.

YN: What does Jane Austen’s House Museum do?
MG: The Museum welcomes visitors from around the world to see the house where Jane Austen lived with her mother and sister for the last eight years of her life. The Museum is a charity and it has been open to the public since 1948. We are open 330 days a year and located in the village of Chawton, in Hampshire. As well as looking around the house, we have hands-on activities and a programme of events.
Read more: yorknotes/an-interview-with-jane-austens-house-museum-pride-and-prejudice/

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Mary Guyatt, Curator of Jane Austen's House Museum

For the first time in my museum career, people seem to get what I do for a living. Admittedly I receive the odd email addressed to the ‘Creator of Jane Austen's House Museum’ but the fame of Austen is so great, and the house itself such a part of our literary heritage, that people seem to comprehend what the Curator’s day to day responsibilities might be.

I hadn't in fact run a house museum before.  Instead of being a functional gallery space to be filled with choice objects, here the site is the exhibition, and much of what we all appreciate are its most intangible and ephemeral features. Parts of the experience of being here are the views from the windows, the smell of floor polish, the stirrings of people and the light streaming in on an autumn afternoon. I'm seeing that maintaining this very special atmosphere is more important than worrying whether we all agree on the choice of wallpaper.

 

 

She keeps a nice blog: janeaustenshousemuseum