by Paula Byrne
25 ‘The Generous Curate’, Juvenilia, p. 94.
26 Juvenilia, pp. 59–60.
27 See the most ingenious Jane Austen’s ‘The History of England’ and Cassandra’s Portraits, ed. Annette Upfal and Christine Alexander (2009).
28 Juvenilia, p. 133.
29 Ibid., p. 28.
30 Ibid., pp. 37, 92–3.
31 Loiterer, no. 29. Full text available online at www.theloiterer/org/loiterer (accessed 15 July 2012).
32 Loiterer, no. 47, by James Austen.
33 Loiterer, no. 27.
34 The case was first made by Zachary Cope, ‘Who was Sophia Sentiment? Was She Jane Austen?’, Book Collector, 15 (1966), pp. 143–51. Strong supporting evidence (e.g. the source in Hayley) has been provided by Deirdre Le Faye and the case is reviewed, with the conclusion broadly in favour of the ascription, by Sabor in Juvenilia, pp. 356–61. Sceptics suppose that Sophia Sentiment is Henry Austen writing with a female voice, but it is worth noting that where imaginary letters to the Loiterer are ‘ventriloquized’ by James or Henry, this is signalled with their initials, but that is not the case here.
35 See further, Margaret Rogers, ‘Jane Austen’s First Publisher’, http://ibooknet-books4all.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/jane-austens-first-publisher.html (accessed 15 July 2012).
36 Juvenilia, p. 142.
37 Ibid., p. 126.
38 Cassandra Hawke, Julia de Gramont, 2 vols (1788), vol. 1, p. 200.
39 Juvenilia, pp. 127–8.
40 Coleridge, ‘Lecture on the Slave Trade’, Bristol, 16 June 1795.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE SUBSCRIPTION LIST
1 Fanny Burney, Camilla, or the Picture of Youth, ed. Edward Alan Bloom and Lillian D. Bloom (1999), p. xvii.
2 Austen annotation in her copy of Camilla, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
3 See David Allen, A Nation of Readers: The Lending Library in Georgian England (2008) and Katie Halsey, Jane Austen and her Readers (2011).
4 Pride and Prejudice, 1.14.
5 Sanditon, ch. 6, quoted from Oxford World’s Classics edition of Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon, ed. John Davie (1990).
6 Ibid.
7 Pride and Prejudice, 2.19.
8 Memoir, p. 16.
9 Spectator (1709), no. 365.
10 Letter 14, Dec 1798.
11 Letter 54, June 1808.
12 Sanditon, ch. 8.
13 Fanny Burney, Preface to The Wanderer (1814), vol. 1, p. xx.
14 Sanditon, ch. 8; Northanger Abbey, 1.14.
15 Northanger Abbey, 1.5.
16 Ibid., 1.7.
17 Ibid., 1.5.
18 Journal, 6 Apr 1782, in The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 5: 1782–1783 ed. Lars E. Troide and Stewart J. Cooke (2012), p. 44.
19 Fanny Burney, Cecilia, ed. Peter Sabor and Margaret Anne Doody (1988), p. 930.
20 Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, ed. Charlotte Barrett, 7 vols (1904), vol. 2, pp. 72, 154.
21 See Pat Rogers, ‘Sposi in Surrey’, Times Literary Supplement, 23 Aug 1996.
22 Letter 10, Sat 27–Sun 28 Oct 1798.
23 See further, Claire Harman’s excellent essay ‘Partiality and Prejudice’, www.claireharman.com/documents/Austenmarginalia_001.docx (accessed 11 July 2012).
24 See www.chawton.org/library/files/Hawke2.pdf (accessed 11 July 2012).
25 Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, vol. 3, pp. 500–1.
26 Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, vol. 5, p. 24.
27 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 5–7.
28 ‘Among those who sooner or later were neighbours of the Leigh-Perrots were Maria Edgeworth’s father Richard Lovell Edgeworth (who speaks of the help he received from Mr Perrot in his experiments of telegraphing from Hare Hatch to Nettlebed by means of windmills)’: Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, ch. 9.
29 The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, ed. Augustus Hare (2 vols, 1895), vol. 1, p. 131.
30 Letter to her half-brother Charles Sneyd Edgeworth, quoted, Family Record, p. 208.
31 Maria Edgeworth, Belinda (1801), ch. 17.
32 Letter 65, Jan 1809.
33 Quoted, Lisa Wood, Modes of Discipline: Women, Conservatism, and the Novel after the French Revolution (2003), p. 121.
34 Letter 108, Sept 1814. The best account of the differences between Jane Austen and Jane West, and their political consequences, remains Claudia L. Johnson’s Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel (1988).
35 Letter 43, Apr 1805.
36 Memoir, p. 71.
37 Anne Elliot’s phrase in Persuasion, when she tries to move closer to Captain Wentworth.
38 Praised by Austen to her nephew Edward – see David Gilson, A Bibliography of Jane Austen (1982), p. 89.
39 Letter 66, Jan 1809.
40 Letter 5, Sept 1796.
41 Letter 108, Sept 1814.
CHAPTER FIVE: THE SISTERS
1 English Provincial School (artist unknown), The Trevanion Sisters, c.1805, private collection.
2 West Briton, 27 Mar 1840.
3 I have been unable to trace Charles Leigh’s parentage, but the fact that he rose to the rank of general, became a governor in the West Indies and a groom of the chamber of the Prince Regent shows that he was well connected – there were many branches of the Leigh family, going back to Sir Thomas Leigh, the Elizabethan Mayor of London. A further Byronic connection is that Jane Austen’s cousin Chandos Leigh, whose father was to inherit Stoneleigh some years after Jane’s visit there (discussed in a later chapter) was a Harrow schoolmate and close friend of Lord Byron. They dined together on the evening before Byron left England for ever in April 1816.
4 Letter 98.
5 Letter of 30 Nov 1796, Family Record, p. 92. Different scholars assign the date of Cassandra’s engagement to various times between 1792 and 1795.
6 Letter 1, Jan 1796.
7 Letter 2, Jan 1796.
8 Pride and Prejudice, 3.19.
9 Jane and Cassandra’s mother, Cassandra Leigh, was the granddaughter of Theophilus Leigh (1643–1725) and his second wife Mary Brydges (sister of the Duke of Chandos). Tom Fowle’s mother was a Jane Craven, from a family that intermarried with the Leighs.
10 Dr Johnson’s Dictionary gives the correct usage: 1. Accurate in judgement to minute exactness; superfluously exact, 2. Delicate; scrupulously and minutely cautious.
11 Letter 58, Oct 1808.
12 Letter 2, Jan 1796.
13 Eliza Letters, p. 138.
14 Letter 89, Sept 1813.
15 Letter 84, May 1813.
16 Letter 12, Sun 25 Nov 1798.
17 Memoir, p. 175.
18 Letter 4, Sept 1796.
19 Letter 10, Oct 1798.
20 Letter 92, Oct 1813.
21 Letter 39, Sept 1804.
22 Christopher Ricks, ‘The Business of Mothering’, Essays in Appreciation (2004).
23 Letter 53, June 1808.
24 Letter 1, Jan 1796.
25 Ibid.; and Letter 85, May 1813.
26 Letter 27, Nov 1800.
27 Letter 92, Oct 1813.
28 Memoir, p. 159.
29 Letter 74, May 1811.
30 Letter 10, Oct 1798.
31 Letter 89, Sept 1813.
32 Letter 159, May 1817.
33 Family Record, p. 177.
34 Sense and Sensibility, 1.2.
35 Memoir, p. 158.
36 Letter 55, June/July 1808.
37 Letter 58, Oct 1808.
38 Austen, Mrs Charles-John (Fanny Palmer), Letters 1810–14: Gordon N. Ray Collection, Morgan Library and Museum, New York (MA 4500).
39 Persuasion, 1.8.
40 Fanny Palmer Letters, Morgan Library.
41 Letter 93, Oct 1813.
42 Letter 92, Oct 1813.
43 Family Record, p. 194.
44 Charles Austen pocketbook, Chronology, p. 501.
45 Ibid., p. 506.
46 Quoted, Brian Southam, Jane Austen and the Navy (2000), p.
255.
47 Fanny-Caroline Lefroy (daughter of Austen’s niece Anna and Mrs Lefroy’s son Ben), ‘Family History’, quoted, Memoir, p. 198.
48 Juvenilia, pp. 75, 223.
49 Memoir, p. 158.
50 Letter 17, Jan 1799.
51 Pride and Prejudice, 2.1.
52 Family Record, p. 76.
53 Sense and Sensibility, 3.14.
54 Letter 109, Nov 1814.
55 Sense and Sensibility, 3.10.
56 Persuasion, 1.4.
57 Family Record, p. 241.
58 Quoted, Hillan, May, Lou and Cass, p. 70.
59 Ibid., p. 71.
60 Memoir, p. 157.
61 Ibid., p. 160.
62 Letter CEA/1, Sun 20 July 1817.
CHAPTER SIX: THE BAROUCHE
1 Quoted, George Athelstane Thrupp, The History of Coaches (1877), p. 84.
2 Juvenilia, p. 51.
3 Letter 87, Sept 1813.
4 Letter 6, Sept 1796.
5 Letter 28, Dec 1800.
6 Pride and Prejudice, 2.14.
7 Chronology, p. 211.
8 Letter 7, Sept 1796.
9 Persuasion, 2.12.
10 Pride and Prejudice, 3.10.
11 Letter 7, Sept 1796. The reference is to Richardson’s heroine Clarissa Harlowe. Carriages hurtling along the road – taking a young man to adventure in the city, a young woman to a dangerous destination or a family on a tour – are essential features in the novels of Fielding, Richardson and Smollett which so decisively shaped the development of English fiction.
12 ‘Love and Freindship’, Letter 13.
13 Eliza Letters, p. 25.
14 Northanger Abbey, 2.14.
15 Ibid.
16 Emma, 1.15.
17 Northanger Abbey, 2.1.
18 Ibid., 1.7.
19 Ibid., 2.5.
20 Letter 142, July 1816.
21 See William Curtis, A Short History and Description of the Town of Alton (1896).
22 Letter 90, Sept 1813.
23 Letter 105, Aug 1814.
24 Juvenilia, p. 133.
25 Ibid., p. 134.
26 Ibid., p. 136.
27 Gilpin on the Wye, ed. T. D. Fosbroke (1822), p. 44.
28 George Colman, The Plays, ed. Peter Tasch, 2 vols (1983), p. 38.
29 Juvenilia, p. 181.
30 Pride and Prejudice, 1.10.
31 Mansfield Park, 1.8.
32 Ibid.
33 Family Record, p. 226.
34 Letter 85, May 1813.
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE COCKED HAT
1 Object OBLI:5673 in the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock.
2 Mansfield Park, 1.13.
3 Mansfield Park, 1.11.
4 Pride and Prejudice, 1.16.
5 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), p. 26.
6 Pride and Prejudice, 2.18.
7 Ibid., 1.15.
8 Family Record, p. 52.
9 Letter 102, June 1814.
10 Clive Caplan, ‘Jane Austen’s Soldier Brother: The Military Career of Captain Henry Thomas Austen of the Oxfordshire Regiment of Militia, 1793–1801’, Persuasions, 18 (1996), pp. 122–43 (p. 124). This chapter is most indebted to Caplan’s admirable original research.
11 Ibid., p. 130.
12 Quoted, Chris Koening, Oxford Times, 10 Nov 2010.
13 Ibid.
14 Caplan, ‘Jane Austen’s Soldier Brother’, pp. 130–1.
15 In 1768 King George III bestowed the title of the 12th (Prince of Wales’s) Regiment of (Light) Dragoons, and the regiment was given the Prince’s badge of three ostrich feathers and his motto ‘Ich Dien’. For the quotation, see Northanger Abbey, 1.14.
16 Ibid., 2.12.
17 Pride and Prejudice, 3.8.
18 Letter 1, Jan 1796.
19 Eliza Letters, p. 139.
20 Mansfield Park, 1.9.
21 Eliza Letters, p. 151.
22 Ibid., p. 154.
23 Ibid., p. 153.
24 Ibid., p.155.
25 WO17/960, Public Record Office, Kew, quoted, Caplan, ‘Jane Austen’s Soldier Brother’, p. 142.
26 Clive Caplan, ‘Jane Austen’s Banker Brother: Henry Thomas Austen of Austen and Co., 1801–1816’, Persuasions, 20 (1998), pp. 69–90 (p. 71). For Charles James, see further, David Gilson, ‘Henry Austen, Banker’, Jane Austen Society Report for 2006, pp. 43–6.
27 Title page to 4th edition, 1816. The earliest edition I have seen is the 2nd (1805), ‘Printed for T. Egerton, at the Military Library, near Whitehall’.
28 In 1802, Henry and Eliza actually visited France during the brief Peace of Amiens to try to recover some of her first husband’s sequestered estates.
29 Eliza Letters, p. 159.
30 He had undertaken some literary publishing, but usually only as part of large consortia of booksellers producing editions of Shakespeare, collections of classic English poets and so forth; he had very little prior experience of publishing and marketing novels. Further connections between Henry Austen and Thomas Egerton include the fact that Egerton had, years before, been London distributor for the Loiterer and their sharing of a printer: the bank of Austen, Maunde and Austen availed themselves of the services of the same Charles Roworth of Bell Yard, Temple Bar, who printed Egerton’s books, including Sense and Sensibility. The second ‘Austen’ in the title of the bank seems to have been the result of one of the sailor brothers becoming a sleeping partner.
31 Letter 70, April 1811.
32 Letter 71, April 1811.
33 Ibid.
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE THEATRICAL SCENES
1 The Collected Poems of James Austen, ed. David Selwyn (2003), p. 8.
2 From their listing among the barrels and hops, it seems likely that the ‘theatrical scenes’ are indeed stage flats, but it is just possible that the reference is to a set of engravings of dramatic scenes analogous to the ‘Curious collection, consisting of 627 prints of theatrical scenes and portraits of the performers, engraved from different masters. Many of them proofs, in 3 large vols, folio’ that appears in the Catalogue of the Library of the late John, Duke of Roxburghe (1812), no. 4034. Either way, the testimony to the Austen family’s theatrical interests remains vivid.
3 Mansfield Park, 1.13.
4 Ibid., 3.3.
5 This chapter draws heavily on my full-length study Jane Austen and the Theatre (2002), but also includes new research and analysis.
6 The Works of Jane Austen (Oxford Jane Austen), ed. R. W. Chapman, vol. 6: Minor Works, revised by B. C. Southam (1975), p. 65. Cited hereafter as Minor Works.
7 Mansfield Park, 1.13.
8 Family Record, p. 58.
9 Ibid., p. 47.
10 Eliza Letters, p. 83.
11 Poems of James Austen, p. 20.
12 The Wonder, quoted from The Modern British Drama, ed. Walter Scott (1811), vol. 4, p. 264.
13 Letter 31, Jan 1801.
14 See my Jane Austen and the Theatre, p. 27.
15 See Hillan, May, Lou and Cass, p. 18.
16 See my Jane Austen and the Theatre, p. 25.
17 Gisborne, An Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex (1797), p. 175.
18 Letter 30, Aug 1805.
19 Letter 3, Aug 1796.
20 Quoted, Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre, p. 35.
21 Pride and Prejudice, 3.9.
22 Byrne, Jane Austen and the Theatre, pp. 45–6.
23 Letter 70, Apr 1811.
24 Letters 71, Apr 1811.
25 Letter 114, Nov 1814.
26 Siddons actually retired, returned and retired again several times over.
27 Letter 112, Nov 1814.
28 Letter 99, Mar 1814.
29 Letter 98, Mar 1814.
30 Letter 71, Apr 1811.
31 Letter 87, Sept 1813.
32 Ibid.
33 Letter 30, Jan 1801.
34 Letter 71, Apr 1811.
35 Letter 51, Feb 1807.
36 Lovers’ Vows
was performed at least seventeen times in Bath from 1801 to 1806.
37 See Belville Penley, The Bath Stage (1892).
38 Letter 98, Mar 1814.
39 Lovers’ Vows, script reprinted in Mansfield Park, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford Jane Austen, 1923), p. 462.
40 Mansfield Park, 1.18.
41 Ibid., 1.17.
42 Ibid., 3.5.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., 1.18.
45 Ibid.
46 Mansfield Park, 2.2.
CHAPTER NINE: THE CARD OF LACE
1 From a private collection.
2 Pride and Prejudice, 1.7.
3 Northanger Abbey, 1.6.
4 Ibid., 1.14.
5 Sense and Sensibility, 2.11.
6 Emma, 3.19.
7 Letter 88, Sept 1813.
8 Southey, ‘Shops’, in his Letters from England (1808), vol. 1, p. 39.
9 Sophie in London, 1786, being the diary of Sophie v. La Roche, translated from the German with an introductory essay by Clare Williams (1933), p. 28.
10 Jane Austen, ‘Love and Freindship’, Letter 4.
11 Bath Chronicle, 23 Nov 1797. It is possible that Austen had made an earlier visit, though no record of it survives. The novelette ‘Evelyn’ in the vellum notebooks includes a letter dated from ‘Westgate Buildings’ (at that time a more fashionable address than it was by the time of Persuasion, where it is the down-at-heel residence of poor Mrs Smith). Austen may have been familiar with the name as the result of a childhood visit to her aunt Jane Cooper (Mrs Austen’s sister, who married Dr Edward Cooper, who resided in Bath despite being a prebendary of Wells Cathedral).
12 Letter 19, May 1799.
13 Letter 21, June 1799.
14 Letter 21, June 1799.
15 Christopher Anstey, New Bath Guide (1799), p. 26.
16 Letters 19 and 20, May 1799.
17 Letter 22, June 1799.
18 Letters 20 and 21, June 1799.
19 Letter 21, June 1799.
20 Family Record, p. 113.
21 Chronology, p. 249.
22 Family Record, p. 107.
23 Ibid., pp. 106–10.
24 Ibid., p. 109.
25 See Elia Aboujaoude and Lorrin M. Koran, Impulse Control Disorders (2010), ch. 3: ‘Kleptomania: Clinical Aspects’.
26 Mansfield Park, 2.2.
27 Letter 31, Jan 1801.
28 Letter 29, Jan 1801.