Jane Austen’s World:

Regency, Revolution and

Reaction

Jane Austen1775-1817

The House of Hanover

George III r. 1760-1820

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.

George III, portrait by Johann Zoffany (1733/4-1810)© Royal Collection

Regency England1811-1820

George IVb. 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 Behn1640?-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

Painting of the interior of the Drury Lane Theater List of Women Dramatists.

Susanna Centlivre1669-1723

Mary Pix1666-1709 Eliza Haywood

1693-1756

Charlotte Charke1713-1760

Hannah More1745-1833 Elizabeth Inchbald

1753-1821

Early Feminists

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

Mary Astell1666-1731

Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu1689-1762

The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain: portraits in the characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo by Richard Samuel, 1778National Portrait Gallery

Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), Scholar, writer; Anna Letitia Barbauld (née Aikin) (1743-1825), 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 (1745-1833), Educator, dramatist, moralist, poet Elizabeth Griffith (1720?-1793), Playwright and novelist;

Charlotte Lennox (1720-1804), Novelist, woman of letters

Sitters:

Popular 18th Century

AuthorsCharlotte Smith

Anna Letitia Barbauld

Mary Robinsonportrait by Gainsborough

Maria Edgeworth

Joanna Baillie

Mary Wollstonecra

ft1759-97

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

Ann Radcliffe, 1764-1823

Fanny Burney, 1752-1840Madame d’Arblay

Popular Contemporary

Novelists

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

“Improved” by Mr. Andrews, 1869 Jane Austen by Cassandra Austen, c. 1810

The Auste

n Famil

y

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) (1771-1850) (1773-1845) (1774-1865) (1775-1817) (1779-1852)

KNIGHT Banker Admiral Novelist Admiral 1)Anne 2)Mary Elizabeth Eliza 1)Mary 2) Martha FannyMatthew Lloyd Bridges de Feuillide Gibson Lloyd Palmer

Anna James Caroline Fanny + 11sibs Catherine +10sibs Cassandra Harriet Fanny m. Ben Edward AUSTEN m. Sir m. John “Cassie”LEFROY AUSTEN- Edward HUBBACK LEIGH KNATCHBULL

Jane Austen Born December 16, 1775 Juvenilia

“The Three Sisters” “Love and Freindship”

[sic]“The History of

England” “Catharine, or the

Bower” “The Beautifull

Cassandra” [sic] Shorter works

Lady Susan (novella) The Watsons (inc.

novel) Sanditon (inc. novel)

NovelsSense and Sensibility

(pub. 1811) Pride and Prejudice

(1813) Mansfield Park (1814) Emma (1816) Persuasion (1818)

posthumous pub.Northanger Abbey

(1818) posthumous pub.

Died July 18, 1817

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” AustenSir Francis Austen

Admiral of the Fleet

Charles AustenRear 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

AustenCountry

Austen Rectory at Steventon1775-1801

Steventon Church

Bath 1801-1806

Setting forNorthanger

Abbey (1803) and Persuasion

(1817)

Chawton Cottage1809-1817

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 Janeby James Stanier Clarke, 1815

Winchester, 1817

Austen’s Will

from the UK

National Archives:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/item.asp?item_id=33

Gentlemen's Quarterly, August 1817.

Jane Austen’s grave in Winchester Cathedral