About

My name is Dr Lizzie Rogers, and I’m a writer and an historian of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, specialising in women’s history and historic houses, alongside their portrayal on screen, and Jane Austen. I am also the Curator and Archivist at Bowood in Wiltshire.

I have worked in a variety of roles from museums to cataloguing antiques, to lecturing and being a tour guide, consulting on productions and designing courses. If you’d like to work with me, I’d love to hear from you – please send me a message here.

My research background

I completed my PhD from the University of Hull at the end of 2020, which was fully funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. My thesis was entitled Women’s Curiosity and Collecting in England, 1680-1820, and explored the role of elite women and collecting within the social and intellectual culture of the country house, including friendship and family relationships, education, knowledge exchange, cabinets of curiosity, and the Enlightenment in Britain.

Thomas Streatfield, *Wanstead House, Essex,* 1807, Yale Center for British Art.

Elias Martin, *A Portrait (Young Woman Reading a Book)*, 1778, Yale Center for British Art.

Theodore Lebrun, Woman in Pink Reclining on a Canape, 1819, Met Museum.

My first “history”

I always visited castles, museums and historic houses growing up with my family. I found these places so interesting that when I was nine I wrote a “history” of the house I grew up in… somehow, it brought together Cleopatra, Robin Hood, and many royal visits… imaginative and inaccurate, it set me on a path to doing real historical research and writing about it along the way.

Eighteenth century on screen

It is brilliant seeing the translation, and creative interpretation, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on screen.

I love period drama because it combines good storytelling with fascinating research and ideas, spotlighting themes, places and people from history who we can think about in new ways.

How ardently I admire and love Austen…

Jane Austen has fascinated me ever since I first watched Pride and Prejudice (obviously the Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth adaptation), and read the book aged nine. My parents named me after Elizabeth Bennet, so I blame them. I think Austen’s books show a great insight into the ideas, lives and feelings of young women in this period.

An historian of…

Eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain
Lives of women
Country houses and house museums
Art, collecting and reading
Learning, travel and the Enlightenment
Friendship, sisterhood and relationships
Jane Austen
The depiction of this period in popular culture