by Paula Byrne
on Jane’s sense of humour 98
recollections of Austen family retirement in Bath 160, 165
Sir Charles Grandison or the Happy Man 141
Which is the Heroine? 291
Lefroy, Anne (1749–1804)
character and description 193–6
charitable works 195–6
comment on lashing of naval lad 241
death of 196
friendship with Jane 195, 196–7
miniature portrait of 193
romantic machinations 175, 178–9
Lefroy, Benjamin 257
Lefroy, Charles 260
Lefroy, Christopher Edward 196
Lefroy, Revd George 193–4
Lefroy, Jemima 265
Lefroy, Julia 265
Lefroy, Tom 174, 175–7, 185, 195, 318
Leigh, Chandos, Baron Leigh of the second creation 234
Leigh, General Charles 92
Leigh, Edward, 3rd Baron Leigh 228
Leigh, Edward, 5th Baron Leigh (d.1786) 226–7
Leigh family 19, 36, 76, 228
Leigh, Lieutenant-Colonel George 92
Leigh, Georgiana Augusta 92
Leigh, James Henry 226, 227, 234
Leigh, Julia Judith Twiselton 234
Leigh, Mary 226, 227, 229, 235
Leigh, Medora 92
Leigh, Theophilus 83
Leigh, Revd Thomas (d.1813) 227–8, 233, 234
Leigh, Sir Thomas 84
Leigh, Thomas (Elizabethan gentleman) 226
Leigh, Tom (uncle) 18
Leigh-Perrot, James (d.1817) 86, 156, 234, 325
Leigh-Perrot, Mrs Jane Cholmeley
disliked by Jane 156
friendship with Maria Edgeworth 86
heir to estate in Barbados 219
inherits everything on her husband’s death 325
and Jane’s romance with Harry Digweed 178
shoplifting incident 161–3
visit of Jane, Cassandra and their mother 155
Lennox, Charlotte, The Female Quixote 78
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, Prince 302
Lewes, G.H. 235
Lewis, M.G., The Monk 80
libraries 77, 78, 166
Lindsay, Captain John 214
Linley, Elizabeth 159
Liston, John 142
Littleworth, Anne ‘Nanny’ 256
Littleworth family 17
Littleworth, John 256
Lloyd sisters 94–5, 112
Loiterer periodical 67–70
London 153–5, 280, 285, 306
London riots 42–3, 49–50, 127
love and marriage 173–90
Luscombe Castle 316
Lyceum Theatre 143
Lyford, Giles King 120
Lyford, John 174
Lyme Regis 1–3, 314, 317–18, 320, 322
Macaulay, Catherine 157
Mackenzie, Henry, The Man of Feeling 66
Madras (now Chennai) 33
Mangin, Nicolas 46
Mansfield, Lord 8, 15, 213–16, 256
Manydown 139, 175
Marbeouf, Marquise de 46
Margate 312–13
Marie Antoinette 41, 44, 50
Mary Queen of Scots 61–2, 64
Maskelyne, Edmund 32
Maskelyne, Margaret 32, 33
Matilda (play) 136, 137
Matthews, Charles 145
Meadows, Captain John 123
mental illness 18–19
Micheldever 15
Middleton, Charlotte Maria 258–9
The Midnight Bell (Gothic novel) 269
Milbanke, Annabella 283
Military Dictionary 130, 132
militia 123–31
miniatures 193
Minton, Lord 298
Mitford, Mary Russell 174, 305
Moira, Lord 132
Molière 145
Monk Sherborne 18
Monro, John 227
Moore, Dr John, 246, 350
Moore, General Sir John 246–7, 350
More, Mrs Hannah 76, 79, 201, 203, 204
Coelebs in Search of a Wife 201–2
Morning Chronicle 75
Morning Herald 314
Morrell, Deacon 20
Murray, John 77, 285, 289, 295–6, 299–300, 301, 306, 308
Murray, Lady Elizabeth 15, 213–14
Musgrave, Mrs 16
Namur (ship) 100
Napoleon Bonaparte 246
Nash, John 316
Nelson, Lord 244
Netley Abbey 245
New Down 15
Newnham, Francis 20
Newton, John, ‘Amazing Grace’ 27
Nibbs, George 20, 21, 220
Nibbs, James 220
Norris, Robert 222–3
novels 78–82
epistolary 102, 273–4
Gothic 42, 49, 71, 84–5, 149, 221
Old Smoaker 314
O’Neill, Eliza 144, 145
opium 34, 37, 39, 251
Orme, Edward, An Essay on Transparent Prints and transparencies in General 9
Owenson, Sydney (Lady Morgan), The Wild Irish Girl 87
Oxford 23, 41
Oxfordshire Militia 124–8
Palmer family 101
Pantheon (Oxford Street) 143
Papillon, Mr 183
Parish, Sam 127
Pasley, Charles, An Essay on the Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire 218
T. Payne, publishers 75
Pearson, Mary 129
Perseverance (ship) 239
Phoenix (frigate) 239
Pierpont Morgan Library (New York) 271
Pinnock, Mary 220
Pinny 1
Pitt the Younger, William 126
The Poetical Register and Repository of Fugitive Poetry 194
Pope, Jane 142
Popham, Sir Home 246
Portsdown Lodge (Portsmouth) 251
Portsmouth 248–9, 251
Portsmouth, Lord 20, 21
Powlett, Charles 175, 177–8
Prince Regent 297–301
profiles 9–10, 13–14
Prowting, Catherine 294
Quarterly Review 203–4, 301
Quincy, Miss Susan 4–5, 6
Radcliffe, Mrs Ann 76, 79
The Italian 270
The Mysteries of Udolpho 270
Ravenshaw, Right Hon. Lord 137
Reading 23–4
Reading Mercury 67, 135
Red Rover (stage-coach) 116
religion 198–210
Repton, Humphry 76, 213, 226, 233, 316
The Retreat 19
Richardson, Samuel 64, 141
Clarissa 79, 81
Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded 56, 81
Sir Charles Grandison 81, 306
Rosings Park 235
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 265
La Nouvelle Héloïse 66
Social Contract 66
Rowling 235
Royal Mail 111–12, 116
Royal Navy 6, 63, 239–44, 249, 250
St Albans (ship) 246
St John’s College, Oxford 66, 67
St Michael, Caerhays 91–2
St Nicholas’s, Steventon 173–4
St Swithin’s, Bath 197
Scarlets 235
Scott, Sir Walter 9, 87, 89, 301–2
The Antiquary 292
seaside resorts 1–2, 311–24, 328–9
sensibility (or sentimentalism), cult of 65–6
Sevenoaks 16
Seymour, William 183, 270, 271
Shadwell, Thomas, The Libertine 145
Shakespeare, William
Henry IV Part One 298
King John 143
The Merchant of Venice 144, 146
Richard III 144
Sharp, Anne 140, 209, 260
shawls 29–30
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 158–9, 282–3, 284
School for Scandal 139, 142
&nbs
p; The Rivals 78, 137
Sherlock, Bishop Thomas 205
Shirreff, Miss 283, 284
shopping 153–9, 161–3, 280, 306
Siddons, Sarah 76, 143–4
Sidmouth 1, 180, 315–16
silhouettes see profiles
slavery 7, 8, 27, 72, 215–23, 222–3
Smollett, Tobias, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker 311–12
Somersett, James 215–16, 219
Sotherton Court 231–2, 235
Southampton 23, 77, 93, 110, 116, 125, 136, 155, 226, 245
Staël, Madame de 296
Stanier Clarke, Revd James see Clarke, Revd James Stanier
Stapleton Prison (Bristol) 125
Stephens, Catherine 146
Sterne, Laurence, Sentimental Journey 66
Steventon 1, 6, 14, 20, 22, 41–2, 43–4, 45, 135, 137–9, 195, 200, 219, 220
Steventon Manor House 173, 178
Stoneleigh Abbey (Warwickshire) 110, 183, 225, 226–35, 235
Strachey, Jenny 36
Stuart, Frank 20
Surrey Regiment 124
Sutherland, Kathryn 295
Taylor, Edward 175
Teignmouth 1, 315, 316
Tenby 315
Terry, Daniel 145
Theatre Royal (Bath) 142, 146
Theatre Royal (Covent Garden) 141, 142, 143, 144–5, 146
Theatre Royal (Drury Lane) 141, 142
theatricals and theatre-going 119, 136–50, 194, 219, 274
Tilson, Frances 185
The Times 246–7
Times (stage-coach) 116
transparencies 9
travel and transport 109–21, 268
Trevanion, Charlotte Hosier 91–2, 93
Trevanion, Georgiana 91
Trevanion, Henry 92
Trevanion, John Purcell 91
Trevanion, Marie-Violette 92
Tuke, William 19
Twiselton, Elizabeth, Dowager Lady Saye and Sele 231
Twiselton, Mary-Cassandra 169
Up Lyme 1
Vanderstegen, William 20, 21
Vermeer 9
von la Roche, Sophie 155
The Vyne (Hampshire) 235
Wallop, John Charles, Lord Lymington 20–1
Walter family 219
Walter, Philadelphia ‘Phylly’
comment on George Austen’s mental defects 45
comment on theatricals at Steventon 137–8
dislike for Jane 44
learns of Eliza’s dissipated life 41
preserves Eliza de Feuillide’s letters 219–20
receives of Henry Austen 129
Walter, Susannah 220
Walter, William 219
Walter, William Hampson 219
Wargrave (Berkshire) 137
Warren, John 20, 174, 175
Wellings, William 13
West, Benjamin, Christ Rejected 199
West Indies 21, 220
West, Jane 87, 88
Weymouth 313, 317, 320
Whately, Richard, Archbishop of Dublin 203–4
Wigget, Caroline 15
Wilberforce, William 201
Williams, Captain Sir Thomas 100, 237
Willis, Dr Francis 19, 227
Winchester 6, 120–1, 209
Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman 124
Wood, John 167, 168
Woolf, Virginia 54–5
Wordsworth, William 26, 55, 265
Worthing 225–6
writing boxes 267–8, 269, 287
Yalden, Mr 117
Zoffany, Johann 213
Zong (slaving vessel) 216, 218
Acknowledgments
The writing of this biography would not have been possible without the work of other Jane Austen scholars, past and present. Many local debts are acknowledged in the endnotes. I owe most to the editions of Jane Austen’s letters by Lord Brabourne (1884), R. W. Chapman (1932 and 1952) and Deirdre Le Faye (1995 and 2011), and to A Family Record by Richard and William Austen-Leigh (1913) and its revision by Le Faye (1989). Deirdre Le Faye’s extraordinarily detailed A Chronology of Jane Austen and her Family (2006) has been my constant companion. It is now the definitive day-to-day record of the life of Austen, and perhaps the book that makes unnecessary any further chronological cradle-to-grave biography. Barring a miracle such as the discovery of a cache of lost letters, if future biographers are to say anything new they will have to be innovative in their methods, as I have tried to be here. But innovation often has a way of looking back as well as forward, and so it has been for me: I have drawn particular inspiration from Constance Hill’s Jane Austen: Her Homes and her Friends (1902), which was based on a pilgrimage to the places where Austen lived and which included illustrations by Constance’s sister, Ellen: this created a pioneering combination of ‘footsteps’ (a technique I already knew from Richard Holmes, the living biographer whom I most admire) and ‘things’ (among Ellen Hill’s sketches are the steps on the Cobb and Jane Austen’s ivory cup and ball).
The other innovation that has been of enormous assistance in my research is the internet: what previous biographer has had access at the click of a mouse to the full text of, say, the novels of Jane Austen’s cousins or the now obscure books mentioned in her letters? Constance Hill’s first chapter was called ‘An Arrival in Austen-land’: a hundred years later, Austen-land is a teeming virtual world of online journals and blogs where remarkably fresh scholarship co-exists with unashamedly ‘Janeite’ sentiment: my special thanks to pemberley.com, austenprose.com, austenonly.com and many more.
Back in the world visited by Constance Hill, I have had enormous help from Louise West and all the staff at Jane Austen’s House Museum.
Professor Kathryn Sutherland has been generous with both warm friendship and exemplary scholarship, and since my arrival in Oxford I have been lucky enough to enter a sisterly circle of Austen scholars, including Fiona Stafford, Mary Favret, Freya Johnston and Nicola Trott. My thanks to Kelvin Everest and Edward Burns for their help with my early thoughts on Austen when I was at the University of Liverpool, and to the great Austen scholar Claudia L. Johnson, who has been a valued supporter ever since she examined my doctorate.
The jury remains out on the plumbago drawing of ‘Miss Jane Austin’, but thanks to the research that went into the television documentary ‘Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait?’ we can be sure that it is authentic to the Regency period, and for this I am deeply grateful to Liz Hartford, Neil Crombie, all the team at Seneca Productions and all the expert contributors, especially Roy Davids, Hilary Davidson of the Museum of London and Nicholas Eastaugh of Art Access and Research; also to Janice Hadlow and Mark Bell at BBC2.
For particular help with the sourcing of images, my thanks to Mette Korsholm of the David Collection, Copenhagen; Marcie Knowles, lace collector in Alabama; David Rymill and Nicola Pink at the Hampshire Record Office; Marilyn Palmeri at the Morgan Library, New York; Sara Denham and Emma Rutherford at Philip Mould and Company; Daniel Bell at the Royal Collection; Beverley Green at the Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton; Bernard Robinson and Kevin Tobin at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, Woodstock; Katherine Marshall at Sotheby’s; Paula Cornwell and Gretchen Ames at Stoneleigh Abbey; Olivia Stroud at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Bob Bearman drew my attention to the importance of the Stoneleigh archive in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Records Office in Stratford-upon-Avon and David McClay, Curator of the John Murray Archive, was generous with his time. Richard Ovenden provided wonderful support from the Bodleian Library. Claire Johnstone of Mansfield College, Oxford, checked and corrected references for me at amazing speed, despite being in the process of moving house.
For the opportunity to try out material in advance of publication, I am grateful to James Runcie of the Bath Literature Festival, Vicky Bennett of the Chipping Campden Literature Festival and Tim Hipperson and Juliette Coles of Oundle School.
At HarperPress, Arabella P
ike is the best of all possible commissioning editors – massively enthusiastic in her support for my books but also rigorous and imaginative in her line-by-line editing. The same goes for her counterpart, Terry Karten in New York. Kate Tolley saw the book through the press in record time, an achievement all the more remarkable because of the number of illustrations, and Peter James was an amazing copy editor, making invaluable suggestions and saving me from crass errors.
As the life of Jane Austen shows, it has never been easy for a woman to earn her living by the pen, but in our own very difficult time for the economics of authorship no professional biographer could wish for better agents than Andrew Wylie and Sarah Chalfant.
Tom Bate took superb photographs of both documents and places. Following in Jane Austen’s footsteps with him, and on other occasions with my parents Tim and Clare Byrne, has been one of the great pleasures of the research. My niece Sarah Bate helped with references. Many thanks to Agnieszka Kuzminska, without whose hard work and help with the children I would have been lost. Ecclesiastical minutiae were furnished by my dear friends the Reverends Matthew Catterick and Paul Edmondson.
During the hectic process of completing the book in time for the bicentenary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, while also settling three children into new schools and taking on the busy role of ‘Mrs Provost’, my sanity was preserved by Northwick Park (where Warren Hastings came over from Daylesford to visit) and by all my friends there, especially Betina Goodall, Fiona Laidlaw and Katy Whyard.
Above all, my deepest gratitude is reserved for my dearest husband Jonathan Bate. I could not have written this book without his faith, love and support. I am thankful to have him in my life.
About the Author
PAULA BYRNE’S first book, Jane Austen and the Theatre, was shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize and has been described by Paul Johnson as “the best book on Jane Austen.” Her second, Perdita, was a much-praised biography of the eighteenth-century actress, poet, novelist, feminist, celebrity and royal mistress Mary Robinson; and her third book, Mad World, was a highly acclaimed and brilliantly original biography of Evelyn Waugh. In 2011 Paula Byrne made a BBC documentary about her discovery of a portrait of Jane Austen, thought by many experts to be the only professional portrait of the novelist painted from life. She is married to the critic and biographer Jonathan Bate and lives in Oxford.
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Also by Paula Byrne
Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead
Copyright
