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Exhibitions > Jane Austen

Jane Austen and the Cultural and Literary Currents of her Time

The books displayed here supported a study day by the Jane Austen Society and the Institute of English Studies at Senate House on 19 February 2011. Please click on the images to enlarge them.

The History of Sir Charles Grandison in a Series of Letters Published from the Originals
Samuel Richardson
London: S. Richardson, 1754
[S.L.] I [Richardson – 1754]

Richardson’s epistolary novel Sir Charles Grandison was one of Jane Austen’s favourite works, and there is undoubtedly a touch of Richardson’s title character in Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Darcy. By around 1800, the twenty-five-year-old Austen has completed a free adaptation, in play form, of Richardson’s work, in which the heroine, Harriet Byron, is rescued by Grandison from a forced marriage to the dastardly Sir Hargrave Pollexfen. Austen learned much from Richardson’s dialogue and representation of social and family life, but also parodied his style and opinions. The passage displayed here, from the first of Richardson’s seven-volume work, describes a musical performance by Harriet Byron.

The Art of Pluck, Being a Treatise After the Fashion of Aristotle Writ for the Use of Students in the Universities, to Which is Added Fragments from the Examination Papers
Edward Caswall
Oxford: J. Vincent, 1864
PR 4452.C75 CAS

Henry Edgar Austen (1811-1854), Jane Austen’s nephew, studied classics at St John’s College Oxford, graduating in 1833. He subsequently studied at the Inner Temple in London and became a barrister. The Oxford of Henry’s day offered undergraduates only two subjects for the BA degree: classics and mathematics. This volume, a satirical guide to ‘plucking’ – failing – Oxbridge examinations, was written by a near contemporary of Henry’s, Edward Caswell, and first appeared in 1836. The pages displayed here present parodies of questions set to classical students. But there was a serious point behind the joke: the 1830s witnessed a questioning of the quality of education received at Oxford and of the low standard required of weaker candidates for passing the BA degree.

Remedies Proposed as Certain, Speedy, and Effectual, for the Relief of Our Present Embarrassments
Thomas Attwood
London: J. Hatchard, 1816
[G.L.] 1816

Attwood’s opening words evoke the financial crisis facing Britain at the termination of years of war with France. The crisis hit the Austens too: Jane’s brother Henry (banker, entrepreneur, and clergyman) was pronounced bankrupt in March 1816 and their brother Edward also lost heavily. There was, for a time, a real danger that the Austens would lose their home in Steventon, Hampshire.

This is one of several pamphlets written by the politician and currency theorist Thomas Attwood. Blaming the financial crisis on the sudden stoppage of the immense circulation of funds that occurred during wartime, Attwood proposes the circulation of “20 or 30 millions of additional paper [currency]” to set the nation’s affairs back on course.

Every Man His Own Broker, or, A Guide to the Stock-Exchange
Thomas Mortimer
London: W.J. and J. Richardson, 1801
[G.L.] 1801

The author of several works on trade and finance, Mortimer based his Every Man His Own Broker on his experience of losing heavily on the stock exchange in 1756. First published in 1761, this is the thirteenth edition – a testament to the work’s enduring popularity. Among much explanatory and advisory content, Mortimer gives his “rules for forming a true judgement when the stocks will rise or fall in their prices”, warning the would-be speculator that “bears are lying in wait to devour your substance”.

Cuffy the Negro’s Doggerel Description of the Progress of Sugar
London: E. Wallis, [c. 1840]
ICOMM WIC23

This hand-coloured juvenile pamphlet illustrates the manufacture and refining of sugar in the British West Indies by the descendants of black African slaves shipped to the islands since the seventeenth century to undertake the arduous work. Jane Austen’s brother Frank witnessed the treatment of slaves on the plantations of Antigua in 1805-6 and the issue of slavery is briefly raised in Mansfield Park, where Sir Thomas Bertram’s desire to discuss it meets with a mute response, in spite of Fanny and Edmund’s interest. Jane lived to see the slave trade abolished in the British Empire in 1807, though slavery itself was not outlawed by Act of Parliament until 1833.

This item is from of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library, which moved into Senate House in 2009.

The Critical Review, or, Annals of Literature
4th Series, Vol. 3
London: J. Mawman, 1813
PR Z

The Critical Review started in 1756 under the editorship of Tobias Smollett. The magazine printed several favourable reviews of Jane Austen’s works. Her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was published anonymously by Thomas Egerton, a friend of Jane’s brother Henry, in 1811, and duly attracted praise from the magazine for its expert blending of “a great deal of good sense with the lighter matter of the piece”. Pride and Prejudice, also published by Egerton, appeared in early 1813, and attracted three favourable reviews, including the one displayed here, which terminates with a very approving paragraph on the left-hand page. Pride and Prejudice was a runaway success but one, unfortunately, from which Austen profited little – having sold the copyright cheaply to Egerton, she received nothing from the second and third editions he printed during her lifetime.

Loyal Volunteers of London & Environs, Infantry & Cavalry in their Respective Uniforms
Thomas Rowlandson
London: R. Ackermann, 1799
[S.L.] IV [Rowlandson – 1799] fol.

The outbreak of war with France in 1793 brought militia regiments to numerous English county towns. Those billeted near Jane Austen’s north Hampshire home soon caused trouble through rioting, drunkenness, lechery, and bad debts. Jane’s brother, Henry enlisted in the Oxfordshire militia and fed his sister with tales. Disguised by their uniform, handsome young men could turn out to be villains, like Lieutenant Wickham in Pride and Prejudice.

These beautiful hand-coloured plates of London volunteers, the work of the artist Thomas Rowlandson, put one in mind of the attraction exercised by the likes of the red-coated Wickham, “the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was turned”.

The Lady’s Magazine, or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex
London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson, 1786
PR Z

As a young girl, Jane Austen was briefly educated at the Abbey House School, Reading. Here the relaxed daily timetable allowed Jane and her classmates to amuse themselves with reading matter such as this. Established in 1770, The Lady’s Magazine contained a great deal of fiction, much of it sent in by readers and often centred on the trials and adventures of lovers of unequal rank and means whose happiness was threatened by their economic and social differences. Stories such as these undoubtedly influenced the young Jane’s writing. The issue displayed here dates from Jane’s time at Abbey House School, which she and her sister left in December 1786.

Cecilia, or, Memoirs of an Heiress
Fanny Burney
London: T. Payne and Son and T. Cadell, 1782
[S.L.] I [Burney, F. – 1782]

Fanny Burney (1752-1840) was one of Jane Austen’s favourite contemporary writers. Pride and Prejudice takes its title from a phrase at the end of Burney’s novel Cecilia, Austen having originally written the work under the title ‘First Impressions’. The further influence of Cecilia can be seen in the parallels between Mr Darcy’s disdainful first proposal to Elizabeth Bennet and Mortimer Delville’s insulting description of his own internal struggle and the reasons he cannot ask Cecilia to marry him. Cecilia was published in five volumes in 1782, the edition of 2000 copies quickly selling out. Readers relished its drama, pathos and humour, and its often unflattering picture of life in high society.