{"id":5776,"date":"2025-07-28T08:50:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T12:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/?p=5776"},"modified":"2026-01-06T14:21:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T19:21:45","slug":"austen-and-burke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/austen-and-burke\/","title":{"rendered":"The Goucher Alumna Who Established One of the Most Important Jane Austen Collections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alberta Hirshheimer Burke 1928<\/strong><\/span>, described as introverted by her family, loved literature, and she loved Rudyard Kipling. While a student at Goucher, she read Kipling\u2019s story \u201cThe Janeites,\u201d about World War I soldiers who bond over their love of Jane Austen, and she wanted to know more. As Burke later wrote to her friend Averil Hassall, \u201cWhen I read it I resolved to investigate an author of whom my favorite thought so highly, and I\u2019ve been entrapped ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

This look at how Burke became a collector of Jane Austen books and materials is featured in the Goucher student-curated exhibition <\/span>By a Lady: Alberta Burke, Jane Austen & the Art of Collecting<\/span><\/i>. The exhibition, prepared by students in Professor Juliette Wells\u2019 Jane Austen Archives Practicum course, is on display in the library\u2019s Collaborative Humanities Exhibition Space until March 13, 2026. \u201cT<\/span>he students chose what they wanted to focus on, how they wanted to organize it, which quotations they wanted to highlight,\u201d says Wells. \u201cThey designed posters, wrote the object labels, chose the fabric. Everything that goes into an exhibition, they did, along with my help and guidance.\u201d One of the most striking elements of <\/span>By a Lady<\/span><\/i> is the display of colorful book covers from translations into Danish, Japanese, Arabic, and seven other languages, some of them reminiscent of paperback romance novels. The covers are facsimiles produced by the students, as it would damage the actual books to leave them on display. Instead, the originals are kept safely with the rest of the collection in the closed temperature-controlled storage area.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
A Spanish translation of Pride and Prejudice, part of Goucher’s Jane Austen Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The student exhibition is part of a larger celebration of all things Jane Austen at the college. That\u2019s because this year, Goucher celebrates two significant anniversaries: It has been 250 years since Jane Austen\u2019s birth, and it has been 50 years since Burke bequeathed her collection to Goucher, a collection that includes more than 1,000 volumes and more than 40 boxes of materials.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Burke\u2019s 1975 bequest to Goucher was\u2014and remains\u2014the largest Jane Austen collection in North America, one that is second only to that at Jane Austen\u2019s House, the museum in Austen\u2019s former home in Chawton, England. Goucher\u2019s collection holds first editions of Austen\u2019s novels, including the only one published in America during Austen\u2019s lifetime, the 1816 Philadelphia <\/span>Emma<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>The collection<\/span><\/a> has continued to grow through other donations over the years, and today consists of rare and illustrated editions, dozens of translations into different languages, and even adaptations like <\/span>Pride and Prejudice and Zombies<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are also 10 scrapbooks created by Burke filled with 20th-century ephemera, like newspaper clippings that mention Austen and playbills from theatrical versions of her work, as well as Burke\u2019s correspondence with Austen bibliographers, booksellers, and her friend and fellow Janeite Averil Hassall. \u201c<\/span>You can really see Alberta Burke [in the items], who she was as a person,\u201d says Kristen Welzenbach, Goucher\u2019s Special Collections and Archives curator. \u201cShe was very feisty and very protective of Jane Austen and wanted her to have her rightful place in literary history.\u201d <\/span>The scrapbooks are incredibly fragile, so Special Collections has been painstakingly digitizing them. \u201c<\/span>We\u2019re putting the final touches on them, and they will be open for people to look at and research as PDFs in September,\u201d <\/span>Welzenbach <\/span>says.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As <\/span>By a Lady<\/span><\/i> explains, Burke began seriously collecting Austen works and ephemera in the mid-1930s. Wells, an Austen scholar who has published three books exploring Austen\u2019s readers and fans, says that at the time it wasn\u2019t prohibitively expensive to buy Austen\u2019s first editions and letters to friends and family. She was a beloved author, but her popularity was nowhere near what it is today. In fact, after a <\/span>Pride and Prejudice <\/span><\/i>film was released in 1940, there were no big screen adaptations of an Austen novel until <\/span>Sense and Sensibility<\/span><\/i> in 1995. That year was a significant one for Austen fandom, according to <\/span>Kaylee Ray-William \u201925\u2019s<\/b><\/span> exhibition, <\/span>Celebrating 1995: The Year That Made Jane Austen a Star,<\/span><\/i> which is on display in Goucher\u2019s library next to <\/span>By a Lady<\/span><\/i>. 1995 also gave the public the BBC\u2019s <\/span>Pride and Prejudice<\/span><\/i> miniseries, its TV film version of <\/span>Persuasion<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>Clueless<\/span><\/i>, the modern take on <\/span>Emma<\/span><\/i>.<\/span> \u201cIt was a year that made Austen fans out of people who hadn\u2019t necessarily read her novels,\u201d says Wells.<\/span> Austen\u2019s popularity exploded, and it hasn\u2019t died down since.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the student exhibitions, Goucher\u2019s year of celebration also features two library artists in residence, who will open an exhibition in Goucher\u2019s library in August. MICA faculty members Victoria Pass, a fashion historian, and Lauren Frances Adams, a studio artist, have been engaging with Goucher\u2019s Jane Austen collection to create their own pieces and produce the exhibition as a celebration of Austen\u2019s 250th birthday. \u201c<\/span>I have no idea what to expect,\u201d says Welzenbach. \u201cI\u2019m really excited about that, because<\/span> I think it will be fascinating to see the collection through the artists\u2019 interpretation.\u201d Special Collections & Archives will hold an open house for visitors to view the artists\u2019 exhibition and materials in the collection on October 28, from 5 to 7 p.m., on the fourth floor of the Athenaeum.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, on September 13, Goucher will host a <\/span>day of events<\/span><\/a> for alumni and others to celebrates the two anniversaries, called \u201cIf I Loved You Less<\/span>: Celebrating Jane Austen\u2019s 250th Birthday and the 50th\u202fAnniversary of the Goucher College Jane Austen Collection<\/span>.\u201d The first session, which was already sold out by early spring, involves a birthday tea with sandwiches and desserts, a talk by an author of a cultural history of Jane Austen fandom, and a tour by Welzenbach of Goucher\u2019s Jane Austen collection. There will also be workshops with the Jane Austen Society of America (JASNA) Maryland chapter, dinner, trivia, and dance lessons, topped off with an English country dance hosted with the Baltimore Folk Music Society.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Burke\u2019s love of Austen is being commemorated outside of Goucher this year, as well. She also left some of her large collection to the Morgan Library in New York, which invited Wells to co-curate an exhibition on Austen with Morgan curator Dale Stinchcomb. That exhibition, <\/span>A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250<\/span><\/i>, is open until September 14 and has gotten great reviews from <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>Observer<\/span><\/a>, <\/span>The Wall Street Journal<\/span><\/a>, and many other publications. Wells, who also wrote an introduction for a <\/span>Mansfield Park<\/span><\/i> edition<\/span><\/a> coming out this fall, was given plenty of freedom in putting the show together; she wrote all of the texts and recorded the audio guide. She also collaborated with the Morgan curators to choose all the objects and determine the order of presentation.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The show is distinct from the Morgan\u2019s previous Austen exhibitions in that it <\/span>features loan objects. Goucher loaned 46 items from its collection, including its 1816 <\/span>Emma <\/span><\/i>and many translations. It\u2019s the biggest loan from the Jane Austen collection that the college has ever made. \u201cThis exhibition is special because we can tell the story of Jane Austen\u2019s life, and her authorship, and her afterlives, with a broader group of materials,\u201d says Wells. \u201cThey also help tell Alberta Burke\u2019s story.\u201d One theme of the exhibition is Austen\u2019s imagination and creativity. \u201cWe wanted to emphasize how much courage it took for Austen to aspire to authorship in that time,\u201d she says. \u201cWe wanted to emphasize how much persistence and perseverance was required, because she didn\u2019t see any of her novels in print until she was in her thirties, but she had been writing and dreaming of publication since she was in her early teens.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The title page of the 1816 edition of Emma, part of Goucher’s Jane Austen Collection. The collection has grown since Burke\u2019s donation, with additions from collectors Barbara Winn Adams, Clive Caplan, and Edith Lank. JASNA now houses the organization\u2019s archives at Goucher, as well.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The exhibition also displays a gold and turquoise ring belonging to Austen, on loan from Jane Austen\u2019s House. \u201cT<\/span>hat was bought, in 2012, by Kelly Clarkson, who was then told that she couldn\u2019t take it out of the country because it was an important heritage object,\u201d said Wells. \u201cAnd she decided, rather than leave it in a vault in England and go and visit it, that she would allow Jane Austen\u2019s House to take up a collection and fundraise to buy it for the house.\u201d This is the ring\u2019s first trip to the U.S.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For Wells, one of the biggest gets\u2014and the largest, as well\u2014is a painting by Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama\u2019s official portrait and lived in Baltimore until a few years ago. Loaned by private collectors, this painting is a portrait of a man titled<\/span> \u201cA single man in possession of a good fortune,\u201d in a nod to <\/span>Pride and Prejudice<\/span><\/i>. \u201cYou see that title, and the person you\u2019re looking at is a young man of color, who has the stance and the dignity and the confidence of all of Amy Sherald\u2019s portrait subjects,\u201d says Wells. \u201cShe\u2019s inviting you to think, \u2018How do you imagine those heroes of Jane Austen\u2019s novels?\u2019\u201d Wells has been using the painting in her teaching for several years and really wanted it in the show. She credits her co-curator, <\/span>Stinchcomb<\/span>, for working to get it in the show. \u201cIt\u2019s great. It\u2019s a showstopper of an ending.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
A room at the Morgan Library for the “A Lively Mind” exhibition, where Goucher alums were recently invited for a special tour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Passing on that joy of curating to her Goucher students for their own exhibitions is a vital part of Wells\u2019s work. She teaches them to think in a different way about audience. \u201cWe talk a lot about how you can\u2019t count on a viewer looking at things in the order that you intend,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have to think about the likely knowledge that some visitors will have, what might interest them.\u201d It\u2019s a creative way for students to engage in scholarship, one in which they immerse themselves deeply.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Welzenbach also stresses the importance of putting the collection in the hands of students. \u201cWe\u2019re not a museum. We\u2019re set up for students and faculty and classes to come in and use our collections, which we want, and they do,\u201d she says. \u201cThe tricky part of it is balancing the care and the needs of the collection while providing access.\u201d Finding that balance is the key to any special collection. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to hide it away\u2014you want people to see it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Goucher students\u2014along with so many people around the world\u2014find much to love in Austen\u2019s work. Even 200 years later, her humor still lands, and her characters are still relatable. Wells sees a strong sense of morality in her work that appeals to readers. Austen\u2019s work has nuance and layers that reward re-reading, and the stories continue to draw people in. As Wells points out, Austen is not the only writer with these qualities, \u201cbut she put it all together in a way that really speaks to people.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To support the library and its many projects, visit Friends of the Goucher College Library<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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