DOVER-FOXCROFT – The Thompson Free Library will present the next event in the annual James Brown Lecture Series on Thursday, May 6. Maryanne C. Ward, retired Chair of the Humanities programs at both Kenyon College in Ohio and Centre College in Kentucky, will give a free public talk, “Jane Austen and Gardens,” at 6:30 p.m. in the library’s new addition.
The lecture series has been endowed with memorial funds donated to the Thompson Free Library in memory of Brown, who lost his life in a boating accident in 2008. The series presents lectures on topics related to history and literature, both areas of the humanities of great interest to Brown.
As the longtime chair of the English Department at Foxcroft Academy, Brown helped two generations of students explore the world of books. He was president of the Thompson Free Library Association and chaired its Executive Committee during the capital campaign that resulted in construction of the library addition in 2006. Brown was also active in the Dover-Foxcroft Historical Society.
Prof. Ward retired in 2006 after more than 40 years in small college education. She taught Russian and Humanities at Kenyon, where she chaired the Humanities Department and served as Academic Dean, before moving to Centre College to become Professor of English and Chair of the Humanities program there until her retirement.
Her area of special interest and scholarship is 19th-century British literature. Among other topics, her publications examined the relationship between literature, landscape and painting.
“So many people have read her novels and now have seen the film versions, I want to provide yet another view of Jane Austen, one informed by study of her novels and the history of landscape gardening,” said Ward. “I have walked through and studied the gardens of many of the great estates in England. Landscape gardening is now and was a very hot topic in England in the late-18th and early-19th century.” Ward said Jane Austen had a keen interest in landscape gardening styles of her day. “Her opinions on the correct way to arrange and care for a great estate are evident in her novels. She frequently uses those great gardens as a subtle form of characterization. However, her depiction of those estates changes over the course of her career as the agricultural economy declined, leading her to find other physical manifestations of the basic values that underlie her novels.”
Prof. Ward’s abiding interest in landscape and gardening has found a new outlet in Maine, where she is the Master Gardener in charge of maintaining the New England Garden at the Blaine House in Augusta.
A member of the Board of Directors for the Maine Humanities Council, Prof. Ward has degrees from Marymount Manhattan (AB), the University of Virginia (MA English, MA Russian), and Ohio State (Ph.D. in English).
Maryanne Ward and her husband, John, live in Pittston, where they raise vegetables for themselves and their grown children and grandchildren.
