Jane Austen’s World:
Regency, Revolution
and Reaction
Jane Austen
1775-1817
The House of Hanover
George III
r. 1760-1820
George III,
portrait by Johann Zoffany (1733/4-1810)
© Royal Collection
 1st Hanoverian king born in
England
 American colonies lost in his reign
 Good family man: 15 children
 Highly cultured
 1768: founded Royal Academy
of Arts
 65,000 of his books went to
British Museum
 Mental derangement, perhaps
caused by porphyria, led to
Regency under his son (later
George IV) in 1811.
Regency England
1811-1820
George IV
b. 1762, r. 1820-30
 Prince Regent 1811-1820
 Final victory in Napoleonic
Wars at Battle of Waterloo –
June 1815
 Known for extravagant
lifestyle
 Illegally married a Catholic
widow, Maria Fitzherbert,
1785
 Married Caroline of
Brunswick, 1795 –
disastrous
England in 1819
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, -Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, -- mud from a muddy spring,
-- Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, -A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, -An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, -Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless -- a book sealed;
A Senate, -- Time's worst statute unrepealed, -Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestous day.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
A TIME OF
REVOLUTIONS
A Time of Revolutions
 Industrial Revolution
 American Revolution: 1775-1783
 French Revolution: 1789-94
 Napoleonic Wars: 1804-15
Industrial Revolution
 Power-driven machinery replaced hand labor
 1765: James Watt – the steam engine
 Industry moved from homes and workshops
to factories
 Population moved from agricultural
countryside to industrial cities
 Enclosure of “commons” into privately
owned estates
 Laissez faire economic policy – free
operation of economic laws –governmental
non-interference
1776: Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Jean-Pierre Louis Laurent Houel (1735-1813),
Prise de la Bastille ("The storm of the Bastille").
The French Revolution
Official British Reaction to the
French Revolution
 Curtailment of civil liberties and harsh
repression
 suspension of the writ of habeus corpus
 advocates of political change charged with
treason
 1791: Rejection of a bill to abolish the slave
trade
 1793: Declaration of war against France
Women in the
Public Sphere
Restoration and 18th C. Theatre
 Theatres had
reopened with
restoration of
Charles II in 1660
 French influence:
Actresses
Heroic
couplets
Neoclassical
modes:
Social
comedies
Heroic
tragedies
 Comedy of
Manners
Witty-language
driven
Satirical of
social
mores
Risque
Marriage
and money
 18th C. Comedy
of Sentiment
Ladies at the opera from Gallery of Fashion (1796).
England’s first
professional female author:
Aphra Behn
1640?-1689
Novelist
 Venice Preserv'd
 The History of the
Nun
 Love Letters
between a
Nobleman and his
sister (1684)
 The Fair Jilt (1688)
 Oroonoko (c.1688)
 The Unfortunate
Happy Lady: A
True History
Playwright
 The Forced Marriage
(1670)
 The Amorous Prince
(1671)
 Abdelazar (1676)
 The Rover (1677-81)
 The Feign'd
Curtezans (1679)
 The City Heiress
(1682)
 The Lucky Chance
(1686)
 The Lover's Watch
(1686)
 The Emperor of the
Moon (1687)
 Lycidus (1688)
“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn, for it was she who
earned them the right to speak their minds.” Virginia Woolf
Mary Pix
1666-1709
Charlotte Charke
1713-1760
Eliza Haywood
1693-1756
Hannah More
1745-1833
Painting of the interior of the Drury Lane Theater
Susanna Centlivre
1669-1723
Elizabeth Inchbald
1753-1821
List of Women Dramatists.
Early Feminists
Mary Astell
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu
1666-1731
1689-1762
 A Serious Proposal
to the Ladies, for
the Advancement
of Their True and
Greatest Interest
(1694)
 Some Reflections
on Marriage (1700)
 Advocated equal
education for
women
 Questioned the
value of marriage
for women in a
patriarchal society
 Poet, prodigious
letter writer,
world traveller
 Advocate for
smallpox
vaccination
 Carried on poetic
debate with
Alexander Pope
 Court Poems,
1716
 Letters from
Turkey, 1763
 Shared Astell’s
opinions on
education and
marriage
Sitters:
The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain: portraits in the characters of
the Muses in the Temple of Apollo by Richard Samuel, 1778
National Portrait Gallery
Elizabeth Carter (17171806), Scholar, writer;
Anna Letitia Barbauld
(née Aikin) (17431825), Poet and writer;
Angelica Kauffmann
(1741-1807), Painter;
Elizabeth Ann Sheridan
(1754-1792), Singer;
first wife of Richard
Brinsley Sheridan..
Catharine Macaulay
(1731-1791), Historian;
Elizabeth Montagu
(1720-1800), Writer and
leader of society;
Hannah More (17451833), Educator,
dramatist, moralist, poet
Elizabeth Griffith
(1720?-1793),
Playwright and novelist;
Charlotte Lennox (17201804), Novelist, woman
of letters
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Popular
18th Century
Authors
Charlotte Smith
Maria Edgeworth
Joanna Baillie
Mary Robinson
portrait by
Gainsborough
 Professional writer,
philosopher and feminist
 Thoughts on the Education of
Daughters (1787)
 1788: Mary: A Fiction
 1792: A Vindication of the
Rights of Women
 1796: Letters Written During
a Short Residence in Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark
 1797: married William
Godwin
 Died of childbirth fever –
gave birth to Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin
(Shelley)
 1798: posthumous
publication of unfinished
novel, Maria or The Wrongs
of Woman
Mary
Wollstonecraft
1759-97
Popular Contemporary
Novelists
Ann Radcliffe, 1764-1823
Fanny Burney, 1752-1840
Madame d’Arblay
Jane Austen and
the Novel of Manners
 Novels dominated by the
customs, manners,
conventional behavior and
habits of a particular social
class
 Often concerned with
courtship and marriage
 Realistic and sometimes
satiric
 Focus on domestic society
rather than the larger world
 Other novelists of manners:
Anthony Trollope, Edith
Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Margaret Drabble
Jane Austen by Cassandra Austen, c. 1810
“Improved” by Mr. Andrews, 1869
The
Austen
Family
Rev. George AUSTEN = Cassandra LEIGH
(1731-1805)
(1739-1827)
Rector of Steventon
.
Rev.James m. George Edward m. Rev.Henry m. Cassandra Sir Francis m. Jane Charles m.
(1765-1819)
(1766-1838) (1767-1852)
1)Anne 2)Mary
Matthew Lloyd
(1771-1850)
KNIGHT Banker
Elizabeth
Eliza
Bridges
de Feuillide
Anna
James Caroline Fanny + 11sibs
m. Ben Edward AUSTEN m. Sir
LEFROY AUSTENEdward
LEIGH
KNATCHBULL
(1773-1845) (1774-1865)
(1775-1817) (1779-1852)
Admiral
Novelist Admiral
1)Mary 2) Martha
Fanny
Gibson Lloyd
Palmer
Catherine +10sibs Cassandra Harriet Fanny
m. John
“Cassie”
HUBBACK
Jane Austen
 Novels
 Born December 16, 1775
 Juvenilia
 Sense and Sensibility
“The Three Sisters”
(pub. 1811)
“Love and Freindship”
 Pride and Prejudice
[sic]
(1813)
“The History of
 Mansfield Park (1814)
England”
“Catharine, or the
 Emma (1816)
Bower”
 Persuasion (1818)
“The Beautifull
posthumous pub.
Cassandra” [sic]
 Northanger Abbey
 Shorter works
(1818) posthumous pub.
 Lady Susan (novella)
 The Watsons (inc. novel)  Died July 18, 1817
 Sanditon (inc. novel)
Jane Austen at 14?
The Rice Portrait of Jane
Austen by English society
artist Ozias Humphry in
an image released by
Christie's on March 23,
2007.
Failed to sell at auction on
April 19, 2007 (minimum
price $400,000)
The Naval Brothers
Francis “Frank” or “Fly” Austen
Sir Francis Austen
Admiral of the Fleet
Charles Austen
Rear Admiral
Cassandra Austen
“If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on
sharing her fate.”
Mrs. Austen
Possible portrait of Cassandra
Silhouette of Cassandra
Great Britain in
the Regency Era
Austen
Country
Austen Rectory at Steventon
1775-1801
Steventon Church
Bath
1801-1806
Setting for
Northanger
Abbey
(1803) and
Persuasion
(1817)
Chawton Cottage
1809-1817
London
Shopping:
Harding, Howell & Co.,
a draper’s shop in Pall
Mall, 1796-1820
Covent Garden Theatre
TO
HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS
THE PRINCE REGENT,
THIS WORK IS,
BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS'S
PERMISSION,
MOST REPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
BY HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS'S
DUTIFUL
AND OBEDIENT
HUMBLE SERVANT,
THE AUTHOR
The Amiable Jane
by James Stanier Clarke, 1815
Winchester, 1817
Austen’s
Will
from the UK
National
Archives:
http://www.nationala
rchives.gov.uk/muse
um/item.asp?item_id
=33
Gentlemen's Quarterly,
August 1817.
Jane Austen’s grave in
Winchester Cathedral