Innholdsfortegnelse for Jane Austen i History Extra

Jane Austen is a phenomenon. Her writing, and the houses, museums and other locations linked to it, provide a window through which we voraciously look to a specific vision of the past. We’re tantalised by adaptations, exhibitions, and new readings of the author’s work that might bring us more Jane, and more information about a period during the late 18th and early 19th centuries that could, in some contexts, be labelled the Austenian era. Austen was born in 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, the seventh of eight children of the Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Austen (née Leigh). She spent the first 25 years of her life in Steventon, before living in Bath, Southampton and then at Chawton, in Hampshire. She also spent time travelling between friends and relatives, as well…

Jane Austen: shy, genteel country girl, happy to pen her romantic novels in the peace and quiet of the family home? Or independent go-getting business woman, determined to achieve literary fame? The answer to this question has provoked much debate over past decades, and will no doubt resurface again in this, the 250th anniversary year of her birth. Frustratingly little is known about Austen, who died tragically young, at the age of 41. Much of the evidence we have of her life is in the form of the many letters she wrote to family and friends, which offer a unique insight into the daily life of the novelist, but little about her thoughts and feelings. Paula Byrne, who has written three books on the author, says: “I’ve never been a…

Ever felt like you could be Elizabeth Bennet? You’re not alone. Entering Jane Austen’s world can feel like an immersive experience. Reading her books (or watching television or film adaptations, or the many spin-offs and lookalikes), it’s easy to believe that somehow we’ve really got to know her England and the people who lived in it. That feeling is encapsulated in the 2008 ITV series Lost in Austen, which follows the adventures of 21st-century heroine Amanda Price. Stepping through a portal into the world of Pride and Prejudice, Price (played by Jemima Rooper) finds herself in the bosom of the Bennet family, messing up episodes in the novel, trying to fix them and, inevitably, falling in love with Mr Darcy (Elliot Cowan). Her opening voiceover declares that “I’ve read [Pride…

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, yet, unlike in her novels, marriage in Georgian England was rarely the stuff of great romances. It was a male-dominated world, and when they married, women passed from the control of their father to that of their husband. Remaining single was seen as a misfortune and was not a viable option for women of any class. Long referred to by the disparaging term ‘old maids’, unmarried women could face a life of penury – even those from affluent families. Jane Austen famously never married and after her father’s death suffered from relative poverty and lack of freedom, always dependent on the goodwill of her brothers. The age of consent was 12 for girls and 14 for boys, but…

One hundred and 11 years ago, in August 1914, Britain was plunging into war. But in the same month a hundred years before, the country was rejoicing at the end – as they thought – of the long conflict with France, and the toppling of Napoleon Bonaparte. The prince regent announced a grand jubilee in London’s royal parks, to be held on 1 August – a date that also marked a centenary of Hanoverian rule. It was rather more spectacular than he hoped: the Chinese pagoda in St James’s Park caught fire and tumbled into the lake, killing two men and some swans, and drawing huge crowds who thought it was all part of the show. In Hyde Park, the fairground shows of Bartholomew Fair, due at the end of…

There are two good reasons to expect the novels of Jane Austen to be factually accurate. Firstly, Austen wrote only about what she knew and what was probable, for fear of giving “false representations”. She drew directly from her own experience and observations of the people around her, and her works are full of the groups and types of people with whom she was familiar. Secondly, Austen was concerned with detail and accuracy. She did not, for example, describe men alone because she did not know how they talked without a woman present. However, it’s important to remember that Austen was first and foremost a novelist, and creative considerations sometimes overrode her factual correctness. Her novels are works of art in which her considerable imaginative powers played a large part.…

In the collections of the British Library is a first edition of, what is for me, one of the most remarkable books ever published: A General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. To Which Is Added, a Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the Most Notorious Pyrates… written by one Captain Charles Johnson and published in 1734. On the surface, this is a collection of fascinating stories about various bloodthirsty rogues. But scratch a little deeper, reading carefully its narratives of murder and mayhem, and you’ll discover that this book actually raises questions that go to the very heart of what we know about the past – and the present. Johnson was a literary phenomenon in the early part of…

His hair was left uncut and combed over his shoulders, he was dressed in a simple cotton shift as if it was always bedtime; he was a flute and harpsichord player who sometimes sat and hammered out well-known tunes, but often lapsed into melancholy silence, sometimes raved and sometimes wept at the sadness of the world. He was the king of England, 72 years old, and all-but abandoned by his family. At the end of 1810, George III was declared insane. On 5 February 1811 a Bill “for the care of the king during his illness” was enacted, and George’s son, the Prince of Wales, declared Regent. Until George III died on 29 January 1820, the prince ruled as Regent; thereafter he became George IV and ruled as king until…

Lake Geneva, 1 June 1816. An “almost perpetual rain” confined the small group of writers to the house. The night was stormy. In the mountains lightning flashed from peak to peak. In a letter to her half sister, Mary Shelley wrote: “The lake was lit up, the pines on Jura made visible, and all the scene illuminated for an instant, when a pitchy blackness succeeded, and the thunder came in frightful bursts over our heads amid the darkness.” Shelley was not the only famous writer to complain about the weather in the summer of 1816. “Oh! It rains again,” lamented Jane Austen from her home in Chawton, Hampshire, on 9 July. “Such weather gives one little temptation to be out. It is really too bad, & has been for a…

On 9 June 1817, a mob of men marched nervously through darkness and driving rain down the country lanes of Derbyshire. They were on their way – or so they thought – to capture Nottingham, 14 miles away, as part of a national revolt to overthrow the government. They did not know it at the time but the Pentrich Revolutionaries, as they came to be called, were taking part in the last armed insurrection in English history – and, according to the late historian EP Thompson, the first entirely working-class political uprising. Armed with pikes and a few muskets, and led by an unemployed stocking weaver called Jeremiah Brandreth – known to them for his Luddite activities as ‘the Nottingham Captain’ – they expected to be joined by thousands of…

Jane Austen moved to Chawton, Hampshire, in 1809, and spent almost the last eight years of her life at the family’s cottage. It was here that she revised her first three novels and wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. But how would she spend a typical day? She rose early, getting up to practise the piano without disturbing her mother, her sister, Cassandra, and her best friend, Martha Lloyd, who lived with them. We can suppose that Jane also wanted time to herself before the day’s round of visits from friends, relatives and neighbours began. Her piano would have had the soft tones of the 1810 Clementi, one now housed in the museum [the Chawton cottage is now Jane Austen’s House]. Jane, like her creations Marianne Dashwood in Sense and…

Pride and Prejudice (1940) There are several things wrong with this MGM production, beginning with its (drastically) period-inappropriate costumes and ending with its storyline being significantly changed so that Lady Catherine de Bourgh becomes a fairy godmother figure, bringing Lizzy and Mr Darcy together. There is an excellent performance by Laurence Olivier as Darcy (which Colin Firth described feeling intimidated by upon taking on the same role in 1995), but it’s the film’s circumstances that are most interesting. Though first conceived in the mid-1930s, it entered production in 1939 with the idea of filming on location in England that August. The outbreak of war in Europe curtailed that plan and, when you realise the context for its release in 1940 – a year into the Second World War – its…

THE GREAT FROST, 1683-84 The Great Frost of 1683–84 saw the Thames frozen solid to a depth of nearly two feet. Londoners made the most of it by creating a frost fair consisting of shops, taverns, coffee and chocolate sellers, and even a brothel. Other amusements included puppet shows, carriage races and bear-baiting. James Chipperfield exhibited a menagerie of performing animals on the frozen river. From the week before Christmas until early February, the frost fair was the place to be. Charles II is supposed to have enjoyed a spit-roasted ox there. THE GREAT STORM, 1703 On 26 November 1703, booming thunder terrified southern England. Houses collapsed, and 4,000 oaks were destroyed in the New Forest. At sea, shipwrecks killed a third of the navy, and the 120-foot Eddystone Lighthouse…

LUDDITES CAUSE HAVOC Between 1811 and 1816, there were numerous outbreaks of Luddism across the Midlands and the North. Gangs of weavers thrown out of work or fearing the loss of wages following the introduction of weaving frames wrecked machinery at mills and factories under the leadership of the mythical Ned Ludd. HIJACKING PLOT In November and December 1816, meetings at London’s Spa Fields – held to present a petition demanding parliamentary reform to the Prince Regent – were hijacked by radicals trying to incite an uprising to overthrow the government. There was arson and violence as a group marched towards the Bank of England, before being dispersed. MARCH OF THE BLANKETEERS In March 1817, around 5,000 unemployed weavers, known as the Blanketeers because they carried blankets, attempted to march…