Jane Austen discussion

Dear all,
I wish to read more extensively on Jane Austen after reading her novels. Do you have any recommendations?
Thank you :)

John Mullan: What matters in Jane Austen
"A truth universally acknowledged" 33 authors on Jane Austem
:)

I would also recommend "Jane Austen in context" edited by E. Copeland

Sorry, this last one wad efited by Janet Todd. It is "The Cambridge companion to J.A." edited by Copeland

And sorry for the typos - mobile goodreads is not the best. :(

Do you want to read more about Jane Austen, or more about her writing?
In the latter case, I think one of the best books about the substance of Austen's major novels is Peter Leithart's "Miniatures and Morals." R. W. Chapman, Mary Lascelles and Lloyd Brown have all written about Austen's narrative techniques.
Deidre LeFaye has published Austen's letters as well as "Jane Austen: The World of her Novels' and there's J. E. Austen-Leigh's "A Memoir of jane Austen."

I second What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved—very readable and insightful.

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things is a mostly excellent biography

The following help explain England at that time and Jane Austen's place in the world

Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels
Jane Austen's England
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist—the Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England
Jane Austen and Her Times, 1775 - 1817

Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom is an excellent history of the fandom.

Thank you all! All of the recommendations are helpful! I've got some reading to do :)

carson Sussannahed/atruth universally acknowledged
Duckworth,Alistair/TheImprovmentof theestate\
like thebooks these have to be readmore than once

Duckfield I.P./Fathers in Jane Austen
Wiltshire J./The Hidden JaneAusten

Duckfield I.P./Fathersin Jane Austen
Wiltshire J.?The Hodden Jane Austen

MY favourite biography of Jane Austen is the one by Elizabeth Jenkins. A Portrait of Jane Austen by David Cecil is good too.

THe World of Jane Austen by Nigel Nicholson is a good book that tells you about all the places that Jane lived in and visited, and what they were like in her day.

JAne Austen's World by Maggie Lane is a good general book on life in her day, covering food, manners, pastimes, farming, health, etc.

THe Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, edited by Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, is a very good book, with chapters on the novels, and subjects such as class, religion and politics, and style. THe chapter on money is particularly interesting, it shows exactly what sort of life the characters in the novels could have on the incomes Jane gives them.

THere is a very good film called Pride and Prejudice, Having a Ball, which is about a recreation of a ball from her era, with all the preperation of the food etc, and particularly the dancing. Ballet students took the parts of the dancers, and were amazed at how difficult the dances were, and how hard they had to work at them. SOmeone said they had a lot more sympathy for Mr Collins, after seeing how hard the dances were! THe film is on YouTube and is also available as a DVD.

Reading her letters is a good thing to do too. The below is an extract from a letter written to her asking her to dedicate her new novel 'Emma" to the Prince Regent (even though she hated the Prince Regent!)

From James Stanier Clarke
To Jane Austen
Thursday 16 November 1815
Carlton House Novr: 16th: 1815

Dear Madam
It is certainly not incumbent on you to dedicate your work now in the Press to His Royal Highness: but if you wish to do the Regent that honour either now or at any future period, I am happy to send you that permission which need not require any more trouble or solicitation on your Part. Your late Works, Madam, and in particular Mansfield park reflect the highest honour on your Genius & your Principles; in every new work your mind seems to increase its energy and powers of discrimination. The Regent has read & admired all your publications. Accept my sincere thanks for the pleasure your Volumes have given me: in the perusal of them I felt a great inclination to write to you & say so. And I also dear Madam wished to be allowed to ask you, to delineate in some future Work the Habits of Life and Character and enthusiasm of a Clergyman...

https://www.janeausten.co.uk/letters-...

Have a look at our website. We've got lots of articles on Jane Austen fiction, non-fiction and on the Regency era.

For example:
"Calls should be made only on At Home days. Days and times for these were engraved on visiting cards."

The art of making a call in Regency England (an incredibly important part of good manners) was much more complicated than simply ringing a doorbell and saying hello. It was very easy to give offence if a call was not returned within the correct period of time or at the right time of day. This post might help anyone reading Austen to understand just how complicated the art of good manners used to be:
https://www.janeausten.co.uk/paying-s... ‎

Jane wrote: "Have a look at our website. We've got lots of articles on Jane Austen fiction, non-fiction and on the Regency era.

For example:
"Calls should be made only on At Home days. Days and times for the..."

Thank you for the link to the article!

Very informative!

I realize this is three years old but if you like Jane Austen and read her novels you may want to try reading her unfinished works like

Sanditon
The Walton
Lady Susan (Probably my least favorite work from her but her most innovative).
A History of England

There is one book (published in England by Butler & Tanner Ltd) called Jane Austen shorter works.

There is also a lovely novel called The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen and it is written as if this had been memoirs written by Jane and simply corrected for spelling and reading.

The Watsons is my favorite of her works! Sooo frustrated she never finished it.

Abigail wrote: "The Watsons is my favorite of her works! Sooo frustrated she never finished it."

Thank you the Watsons - I don't know why I typed the Waltons.

Have you read The History of England? It's pure comedy.

Probably you typed “Watsons” and Autocorrect thought it knew better. I hate that! I do like The History of England, but as an American I don’t feel its issues in my bones. I love the audaciousness of early works like “Jack and Alice” and “Love and Freindship” as well.

From what I can remember of the Watsons, read a long, long time ago, it was rather sad and depressing. I fear it was a sign that life was getting increasingly sad and depressing for Austen too, as she got older and iller, and still hadn't made the money she so badly wanted out of publishing.

I do think she died 'just too soon' - given a little more time, she'd have got the hang of the publishing business, and made more money. It would be so nice to think of her and Cassandra, comfortably off middle-aged women, in a nice house they paid for themselves etc, being respected and admired by all, and never worrying about bills again.

It is quite sad, which is what interested me about it—it feels more real-world than her other novels. It was written in the middle of her career, after the early versions of Northanger Abbey, S&S, and P&P but before MP, Emma, and Persuasion. So her decision not to finish it was deliberate—though I don’t believe the reason was the one usually cited, that her father died and the story felt too close to her own life. I think the structure of the story itself is problematic and she realized it.

Jane abandoned The Watsons long before she was a published author! Her father retired, they moved to Bath, they changed houses a lot, her father died.

Jane Austen's great-nephew, William Austen-Leigh (1843 -1921), claimed his aunt may have abandoned The Watsons when become aware of the difficulty "of having placed her heroine too low, in a position of poverty and obscurity…and therefore, like a singer who has begun on too low a note, she discontinued the strain."

"James Heldman, in an article in Persuasions in 1986, argued that the narrative approach in The Watsons is different – that there is less distance between the heroine and the narrator than usual, and it lacks the usual “narrative voice of Jane Austen telling us the story, informing us, guiding us, shaping our responses, standing between us and her characters as we together watch them live their lives.” He goes on to theorize that Emma Watson’s sense of displacement in her new home may be read as a dramatic rendering of the author’s own sense of unease in Bath."


Why Did Jane Austen Abandon The Watsons

the blog post continues on to say

"She endured two punishing losses in quick order: the death of her friend Madame Lefroy, and that of her father, which was not only a personal blow but also a practical one, leaving her mother, her sister and herself in a precarious financial state and for several years without a settled home.

In The Watsons, Emma Watson’s father, a retired clergyman, is in poor health. Family tradition holds that Jane told Cassandra that he would die in the course of the story, forcing Emma to move in with her annoying brother.

Maybe creating a kind, dying, retired-clergyman father and then having her own kind, retired-clergyman father die was a little too much reality for Jane Austen."

It was Sanditon she became too ill to finish.

Ah, OK, but at least I was right about the 'sad' feel to it, even if that was caused by other, pre-end-of-life sad things happening to her.

I wonder, had she lived longer, and had become financially successfull, whether she'd have taken another look at the Watsons and reworked it as she did so much else in her writings.

Authors don't like to waste words - and that must have been true the more then, when they were labouriously inked onto paper, rather than pattered out on keyboards!!!

his aunt may have abandoned The Watsons when become aware of the difficulty "of having placed her heroine too low, in a position of poverty and obscurity

**

This must surely have rung uncomfortable bells for Austen - who really almost, by the end, hovered on the brink of becoming seriously 'de-classe' (sorry, can't do the accent on the final e!).

She must have felt that her hold on 'gentility' was slipping away from her, and, like Miss Bates in Emma, and Mrs Smith in Persuasion, that she was becoming borderline 'non-genteel', simply for want of money.

The whole issue of 'slipping down' the social ladder is a fascinating (and sad) one, in that so much attention tends to focus on 'going up' the ladder, people from 'lower down' succeeding in 'making good' and how they then try to fit in with the established 'genteel folk' - eg the Lucases in P and P, who still, to the snobby Bingley sisters, 'smelt of the shop' (they were probably as snobby as they were because they knew they themselves were only another generation removed from the shop!), and then, I think, wasn't it the Coles in Emma who had 'made good' but were still a bit nervous of presuming to invite Emma to their party?

I wonder who else in Austen, apart from the two I've mentioned, Miss Bates and Mrs Smith, are similarly 'hovering at borderline' of sinking out of 'gentility'?

It all boils down to money, though - their 'birth' was 'genteel', but they lacked the money to have a 'genteel' lifestyle (as Emma pretty brutally points out about Miss Bates.)

It must have been very frightening to be in that position. (Still is, really, though it's easier to claw back up again by making money to restore one's 'place' in society!)

I loved reading Carol Shield’s Jane Austen biography - very easy to read, interesting and insightful, and not too long!

I think I read it a good few years ago - David Cecil's is another good one, though quite old now I think.

There's certainly a good few to choose from!

The best book I have read on Jane Austen is What Matters in Jane Austen by John Mullan. He also has some great YouTube videos.

I also really like close readings with Dr. Octavia Cox, she has a Youtube channel.

Beth, what do you think of Miss King in P&P? Her fortunes are rising with her ten thousand pound inheritance, but what do you think of her background? I read somewhere that the merchant class was far more likely to include girls when giving out inheritances. Does her receiving an inheritance from a grandfather indicate she is lower born?

Happy New Year!
Shana

Shana wrote: "Beth, what do you think of Miss King in P&P? Her fortunes are rising with her ten thousand pound inheritance, but what do you think of her background? I read somewhere that the merchant class was f..."

We know very little about Miss King, but we do know she was present at the assembly ball, "Then, the two third he danced with Miss King". Bingley seems to dance with people who are high class in Meryton, the Lucases and the Bennets, which gives me a suspicion that Mary King is at least gentry. I believe Bingley danced in order of precedence (by age and importance of the family).

We also know she, "She is gone down to her uncle at Liverpool" and that before she inherited she had nothing. It seems likely, since we never hear of a King family, that she is somebody's ward. It is entirely possible that her family was of a merchant background, but it is also possible that they were poorer gentry. In the Watsons, Emma was being set up to inherit her aunt's fortune so it seems possible for a gentry fortune to go to a girl.

That is all my ideas, Happy New Year!

Agreed. I also thought Liverpool was code for merchant or business class.

In other words, she didn’t go down to her uncle’s country estate in ______shire.

Shana wrote: "Agreed. I also thought Liverpool was code for merchant or business class."

Yes, it doesn't say estate which might be a tip. But then let's compare Mary King to Mr. Weston. He seems like he might be a second son of gentry, as he is first in the militia. But then, after his wife dies, he goes into trade with his brothers. Then, when he makes enough money, he buys an estate and is accepted as "gentry" by the snobby Miss Emma Woodhouse. I get the feeling from his history, that the lower levels of the gentry and the upper levels of trade often mixed and crossed over the line. So Mary King could be lower gentry with trade connections, like Mr. Weston.

I agree with the mixing! Though I do still think of Miss King as upper level trade class, not lower level gentry. Think of Darcy, the wealthy nephew of an earl, befriending Bingley! Bingley’s dad clearly sold his business before he died. So the younger Mr. Bingley is further removed from the taint of trade.

I have often wondered abou t Mr westons status including thatof his wife being a former governess In what way are they more acceptable as being a "first family " in Highbury as different than lets say the Coles or Coxes even to Emmas imagining a match for her nefyew with their daughter?

Mrs wrote: "I have often wondered abou t Mr westons status including thatof his wife being a former governess In what way are they more acceptable as being a "first family " in Highbury as different than lets ..."

Yes, when I realized how tenuous Mr. Weston's claim was in the gentry, I really appreciated what Emma says, “There can be no doubt of your being a gentleman’s daughter, and you must support your claim to that station by every thing within your own power, or there will be plenty of people who would take pleasure in degrading you.”

I think Mr. Weston is allowed to be a "first family" because Emma (and Mr. Knightly) recognize him as such. Emma also wishes to promote the standing of her governess (who was likely a poor gentleman's daughter). One clearly must own land to be in the landed gentry class, but it is just as important for fellow members to recognize your claims.

The Bingleys have this, they associate with people of rank, they've made it!

Bethany - the John Mullan book is absolutely brilliant, and I recommend it to all Janeites. It 'slices' all the novels, and then heads chapters with questions such as 'Who has sex in JA' (surprising answer! etc.

A very innovative read I think and quite unique.

Beth-In-UK wrote: "Bethany - the John Mullan book is absolutely brilliant, and I recommend it to all Janeites. It 'slices' all the novels, and then heads chapters with questions such as 'Who has sex in JA' (surprisin..."

I do disagree with him once or twice. For example, I don't think Henry wants to marry Fanny just so he can have sex with her, his explanation of her merits in Ch. 30 of Mansfield Park lays out very clearly that he loves her for other reasons. But in general the book and his lectures are really good.

Beth-In-UK wrote: "Bethany - the John Mullan book is absolutely brilliant, and I recommend it to all Janeites. It 'slices' all the novels, and then heads chapters with questions such as 'Who has sex in JA' (surprisin..."

I do disagree with him once or twice. For example, I don't think Henry wants to marry Fanny just so he can have sex with her, his explanation of her merits in Ch. 30 of Mansfield Park lays out very clearly that he loves her for other reasons. But in general the book and his lectures are really good.

I have to admit I haven't read P and P in a while, so confess I can't 'place' Miss King. However, I agree with the idea that her money, at least, comes from 'trade'. And that the lower levels of gentility could cross with the upper levels of trade, and it might take only a generation or two for 'trade' money to 'gentrify'.

As has been said, the Bingleys' money comes from trade, but further back than, say, the Lucases, whom the Bingley sisters eagerly despise ('And I expect he kept a very good shop' they snigger to themselves) - but that contempt could be exacerbated precisely because they are conscious of being only a generation or so removed from 'the shop' themselves.

I would say, very roughly, do others agree??, that 'trade' wealth could be 'washed' (ie, 'gentrified') in one of two ways. The girls could 'marry up' with a suitably generous dowry, perhaps especially to younger sons like Colonel Fitzwilliam, who has the habits of an expensive man (having been raised in an aristocratic milieu) but not the money to sustain them.

The men could, once they had accumulated sufficient trade wealth, buy an estate of sorts, as Mr Weston does (and the Coles?).

Mind you, just how much agricultural land was needed might be moot - was a 'big house' sufficient, with pleasure gardens, and perhaps a deer park, etc, but no actual agricultural land, neither a home farm nor tenanted farms?

Even Hartfield, the Woodhouse residence, does not seem to be the centre of an agricultural estate, is it? We don't hear about land do we, not in the same way as Donwell Abbey of the Knightleys?

Once someone like Mr Weston had 'washed' his trade money by buying a Big House/estate, he might then become eligible for marrying into the established gentry to increase his social standing even more, and start to embed himself into the landed gentry social and family networks.

Eventually, he might even get a grant of arms himself? I wonder how easy it was to achieve that? And did it definitely require an estate consisting of tenanted farms?

The 'matches' between trade money and landed money seem to have, not surprisingly, ranged 'up and down' the social ladder. What I mean is, that someone in trade who had made a certain amount of money could then expect to marry a daughter with a proportionate dowry to a 'landed' man of proportionate rank.

So someone like Colonel Fitzwilliam would need a wife with a trade-derived dowry that would be commensurate with his status as a younger son of an earl.

Whereas a lower-rank gentleman could make do with a lesser amount of dowry.

Similarly, someone like Mr Weston only needed a proportionate amount of trade money to set himself up as a 'gentleman' of Highbury, whereas if you wanted a massive landed estate you'd need to have made a pretty massive fortune out of trade.

The other factor when it comes to social mobility at the time must have been, to be blunt, the availability of estates. After all, there's a finite amount of land in the country, so no wealthy cit/merchant could go 'up' the social ladder by becoming landed, without a previouisly landed gentleman/nobleman either selling off part of his land, or all of it.

Even just acquiring the land for a 'big house' with large grounds, would require whoever owned the land itself to relinquish it. And why would anyone do that if they didn't need the money in the first place, thus implying that for every cit/merchant going 'up' in the world socially, there had to be a 'gentleman' going down in the world at least financially.

In Persuasion, Kellynch Hall is getting perilously close to being sold off - renting it out is staving off the evil moment, but if Sir Walter doesn't curb his extravagance (or die), it could still end up sold (though I assume it's entailed on his nephew?)

One clearly must own land to be in the landed gentry class, but it is just as important for fellow members to recognize your claims.
**

I think that's spot on. The Coles are a prime example, aren't they? They've lived in Highbury for years (I think??), but have only recently reached a level of prosperity to permit them to be admitted to the social circle Emma frequents. Only when 'she' acknowledges their existence do they actually exist in her circle!

She does the same thing with Harriet - almost 'forcing' her upon her social circle, and everyone else has to accept her as a 'gentlewoman', albeit at the lowest level. Had Harriet had the same character as Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair she'd have leeched off Emma quite deliberately, and gone all out for a 'good match for herself.

(Hmm, now there's another novel - what if Harriet had indeed been like Becky Sharp, and like Becky set her cap at a widowed older man, and managed to get Mr Woodhouse to marry her!!! Then she might have produced a son - whether Mr W's or not! - and cut Emma and Isabella right out of a good wodge of their inheritance!!!!)

As an aside, if 'Liverpool' is code for 'merchant' and 'trade' I guess the same is true of Bristol in respect of Mrs Elton?

Not to mention that both cities were very involved in the slave trade, so there is always that 'taint' about them.

There must, overall, I suspect, have been substantial resentment by those landed gentry whose fortunes are fading, against all the 'new money' coming in from trade.

I wonder if, overall, if you had made money in trade, it was by and large easier to 'move up' socially if you decamped to a new area. Were you more likely to be taken up by the landed classes/gentry if you arrived 'from somewhere' than if you were known to have made your money locally?

I would suspect the former. To go from being 'looked down on' because you were lower class and 'poor', to then being treated as a social equal once you made money, must have been tricky. Also, of course, you probably had a lot of family living in the area who were still 'lower class' than gentry.

Surely far better to take your money and decamp where you weren't known, so you could 'abandon' your poorer relatives elsewhere, and then behave, once you'd bought your big house/estate, as if you had simply 'moved sideways' so to speak, in social terms, arriving from a different part of the country.

That said, there must have been, as there still is, a whole host of myriad points of etiquette etc that could catch you out, and show you up as 'nouveau riche'. For a start, you wouldn't have any relatives that anyone 'upper class' would have heard about.

One of the things that the upper classes do, don't they, is immediately find out who and how they are all related - as most of them are....(!)

I once read a (very long) essay about the way P&p was a great sociologcial and phycological peice. one of the ideas was that as an unconcious collective England was terified of what had happened in France and to prevent that the class ranks were opened not entierly but one or two below and above so for example you have Mrs Bennet marry MR bennet . The gardeners and Bingly become acceptable gentry and Elizabeth marrys Darcy A child of hers could marry the son of an Ear lso from Mrs Bennets small town lawer father a great grandson could marry nobility- but slowly moving upso that sociaty could adjust. I may add that the change came about slowly stsrting with th French revolution and ending only with world war

world war I, As for the Royal family it only ended now Compare poor Princess Margerets loves and the current marrige of the prince Henry she never would have been acceptable a generation ago (devorced american older than he working in Hollywood entertaiment, personally I think she is bad news I wouldnt want her as daughter in law...)

Mrs B, I definitely grew up with the 'given' that it was precisely because of the social mobility in England that the country was 'saved' from the likes of the French Revolution.

The theory is that by allowing upward social mobility, and 'new blood' to enter the ranks of the upper (landed) classes, and even then become part of the peerage, it prevented the kind of 'pressure cooker' situation that built up in France during the stifling Ancien Regime.

The class system in England was far less proscriptive and prescriptive than in France, where there were clearly definined orders and estates (eg, the nobles of the robe, of the law etc etc) and the First, Second and Third Estates etc. Being French, of course, they loved all that 'order' (!) and distinct categorisation. Whereas in England things were far less defined and far more fluid.

The 'range' too was larger. Both at the 'lower end', ie, 'trade' where one could range from being a modest 'self-employed' businessman like a small shop keeper, right up to being a millionaire banker like the Rothschilds. It was still 'trade' but with a very wide internal range.

Similarly, that 'range' was visible in the upper (non-trade/non-business) classes. As Lizzie Bennet famously retorts to Lady Catherine, defending her 'social right' to marry Darcy - 'He is a gentleman, I am a gentleman's daughter'. Yes, the financial difference between the Bennets and the Darcys was huge BUT they were all 'gentlefolk'.

Perhaps the only absolute formal distinctions came from the College of Heralds? Either you were armigerous, and had a coat of arms, or you weren't. Either you had a title (from baronet up to duke), or you didn't. That was pretty clear cut.

Even if you were upper class, too, ie, landed, you could still make money out of business enterprises, from profitable agriculture on your own behalf (ie, on land you had farmed for your own profit, rather than let out to tenant farmers paying you rent, but not their profits), to mining, canals, etc. So long as you employed 'agents' to actually DO the work (and you only commissioned it, financed it, and took the profit!), it did not taint you with 'trade'.

I would definitely agree with your thesis that at the time of the actual French Revolution it became even more important to have that 'social safety valve' so that allowing more social mobility than previously became a wise political move to preserve the establisment and take the pressure off. (Ironically, it didn't work at the lowest end, as the factory system became harsher, and enclosure had created a 'landless poor' etc etc.)

In a way, it's arguable that the greater social mobility in England dates right back to the 16th C Tudor times. The dissolution of the monasteries when Henry VIII did his infamous 'land and wealth grab' from the Church when he broke with Rome, enabled him to auction off the seized church lands to the 'new men' coming up, who could, at a stroke, buy themselves a whole heap of profitable land, and set themselves up as gentlemen and, indeed, new nobility.

This was helped because in the previous century the civil war of the Roses disposed of a lot of the existing maedival nobles, and the winning side (which swapped continually, right up until the Tudors) could execute and attaint (seize the lands) of nobles on the losing side.

Add to that the fact that the population of England had crashed (by up to a half) in the 14th C due to the Black Death, and that a lot of agricultural land was abandoned in the 15thC because of lack of farm workers, and you also have 'spare capacity' of land for the new rich of the Tudor 16thC to grab some of it and set themselves up as landed gentry/newly created nobles.

The Tudors needed a nobility that was loyal only to them (ie, not to any rival claimants as in the previous Wars of the Roses), and the best way to do that was to create a new nobility loyal only to them and no one else, and dependent on the Tudor monarch alone for their status.

I would say that all these factors, plus, of course, that the 16th C saw the beginnings of the British Empire (the first exploration and grabs of North America etc, and global trade networks via the sea to replace the lost land based trade links as the Med became an Islamic Lake after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans), all helped both to enrich England, and stimulate social mobility.

The final factor for the Regency period was the Agrarian and Industrial Revolutions of the 18thC which boosted food output massively by increasing yields, and boosted material output by harnessing steam power, all of which both fuelled greater prosperity and created far more trade-and-industry-based fortunes amongst aspiring, socially mobile entrepreneurs.