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Jane Austen and SPCK
On 16th December 1775 the English novelist Jane Austen was born. You may wonder why we’re acknowledging Jane Austen’s birthday. What was Jane's involvement with SPCK? Find out in this blog post!
On Jane Austen's birthday we (SPCK) would like to thank her for her historic gift and involvement with the charity.
In Jocelyn Harris' entry for the JASNA’s annual (Jane Austen Society of North America) she writes:
On 26 August 1813, Jane Austen subscribed 10s. 6d. towards the formation of a District Committee of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
How much was this compared to her salary and allowance? And why did she choose SPCK?
Jocelyn Harris goes on to explain:
So which of these many activities might Austen have especially admired? The SPCK’s provision of equal education in literacy, numeracy, and Biblical knowledge for girls as well as boys would surely have appealed to her, along with its encouragement of such skills as needlework and woodwork. She might also have known that as well as providing advice and encouragement to local groups to help them set up, finance, and run many hundreds of schools, the SPCK was the catalyst for the spectacular growth of the charity school movement.
Education continues to be a key element of our mission, and our role as a catalyst in the charity school movement in the 18th century has its modern equivalent in our Assemblies website, which helps teachers provide a time of spiritual reflection for hundreds of thousands of children every day.
Assemblies.org.uk benefits a huge number of teachers, clergy and youth workers! On average, we receive 6 million page requests each year, and our most popular assemblies are downloaded 10,000 times! Learn more about our programmes such as the Assemblies website here >>
Find out more about SPCK's history here >>
JASNA. 2012. Jane Austen and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number34/harris.pdf. [Accessed 10 December 2019].
