Naively, I viewed Mrs. Burke as just another wealthy, privileged, materialistic woman who indulged her interest in Jane Austen to an extreme and then left us to deal with her multitude of stuff. However, in reading and re-reading her words, I found a new appreciation for Alberta Burke, her devoted husband Henry, and their astounding collection of Austen treasures. After transcribing some of the letters, I used a coding technique that I’d learned in my research methods class and combed through the text to construct a personality sketch of Mrs. Burke, a copy of which is now on file in the archives. Currently I am three days away from having my master’s degree in clinical psychology.

Archival work will not be my first career, though I continue to work in special collections as a way to balance my clinical endeavors. Nevertheless, I do believe my exploration of Mrs. Burke will help me to be a better clinician. She reaffirmed for me that first impressions, though informative, are not always correct. I have never known or studied someone like her before — a true aesthete and bibliophile; a privileged introvert whose friends were novels, frescoes, and cats; and a meticulous Janeite who managed to turn her obsessive nature into a functional lifestyle and rich legacy.

Collecting Austen by Nicole Mead ’23

Janeites (Jane Austen fans) demonstrate their dedication to Jane Austen through numerous avenues of expression, such as art, pottery, fanfiction, and collecting. Collecting is an activity with its own set of complicated historical and social implications. Our understanding of what it means to be a collector continues to evolve throughout the years – from the 1800s, when a book collector might be considered a “bibliomaniac” (a pseudo-psychological illness); to 2009, when the TLC television program Hoarders was first released, and all the way to 2019, when Marie Kondo’s Netflix show sparked a new wave of distaste for people with an accumulation of material goods. Mainstream perception of collectors has been subject to change, but also to stigma in both societal and psychological realms. There is no single answer as to why people collect, but examining the different reasons for collecting across different psychological perspectives will yield several different answers to our question. One could take a psychoanalytical approach, which might assume a person is collecting to gain a sense of control related to past trauma, or an existentialist approach, which assumes we collect to feel a sense of immortality.✻✦

Beyond simply understanding the value of a person’s collection, it is immensely important to look at how a collection (1) makes them feel, (2) affects their well being, and (3) affects their quality of life. I wanted to take the opportunity to honor alumna Alberta Burke, the reason Goucher College is lucky enough to have our esteemed Austen collection. Alberta Burke’s affection for and dedication to all things Jane Austen led her to possessing the “finest privately-owned” collection outside the Austen family.✿ Burke is a bit of a mysterious figure; she was private, and seemingly shy.✿ Her passion for collecting did not stem from a desire for status or wealth, or a desire to accumulate material goods. Instead, her collection was rooted in her affection for Austen and a desire to be closer to her.✿

Though I am not qualified or inclined to assess the nature of Burke’s collecting, I can note that among the primary negative effects of collecting behavior, such as isolation and risk-taking behavior, Burke displayed few signs of these behaviors.✦♥✿ In Burke’s lifetime, her collecting allowed her to gain community and connection within the Janeites, and she maintained a strict budget. It seems, by all accounts, her collection seemed to reap mostly positive benefits for her mental well-being. Burke experienced satisfaction from meeting and setting collecting goals, gained expertise/competence, and relatedness.✦♥ Beyond that, her collection and her generosity continues to benefit Austen lovers, as most of her collection is available to all Goucher students, here at the Goucher Library.

Harriet Smith Through Time by Molly King ’23

Something notable about Jane Austen’s writing is the lack of detailed physical descriptors of her characters. The first part of Emma’s immortal opening line, “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich,” is almost the closest Austen gets to describing Emma’s features, though a few more details emerge throughout the novel, including her hazel eyes. Austen describes Harriet Smith in more detail: Emma sees her as “a very pretty girl, [whose] beauty happened to be of a sort which Emma particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness” (chapter 3). Even in this narration, there is a vagueness that allows the artists of illustrated editions many options in how they depict both Harriet and Emma.