by Jane Austen
Appendix
Letter of Sophia Sentiment from The Loiterer, 28 March 1789
The text of Sophia Sentiment’s letter is reproduced below from the ninth issue of The Loiterer, a humorous weekly paper launched on Saturday 31 January 1789 by Jane Austen’s eldest brother, James, at the time a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.1 The paper’s articles were largely written by James himself, with help from his younger brother Henry and various undergraduate friends.2 In his first editorial James proposed to supply the reader with ‘a regular succession of moral lectures, critical remarks, and elegant humour’. The Loiterer ran for sixty issues to 20 March 1790, when James left Oxford, and was issued commercially, though its circulation was small, through booksellers in Oxford, Birmingham, Bath, Reading, and London. Its model was Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s Spectator, whose first series ran daily from March 1711 to December 1712. Later examples of its enduring format—a partly simulated and partly genuine interaction between readers and writers, a kind of conversation in print—can be found in two popular periodicals conducted by Henry Mackenzie, The Mirror (1779–80) and The Lounger (1785–7). More immediate precedents were the hugely successful Eton journal The Microcosm (1786–7), written by schoolboy George Canning and friends, and the forty-eight numbers of the Olla Podrida, edited by Thomas Monro of Magdalen College, Oxford, and published in book form in 1788. Mentioned in Sophia Sentiment’s letter as among ‘the entertaining papers of our most celebrated periodical writers’, they represented a fashion for teenage (schoolboy and undergraduate) journals in the late 1780s and early 1790s.
It has been suggested that Sophia Sentiment’s letter is Jane Austen’s first published piece. In it the writer complains to the editor of the absence of stories to interest women, ‘about love and honour, and all that’, from The Loiterer’s first eight numbers. Jane Austen was at the time 13 years old. But the attribution remains uncertain, with critical opinion divided. There is no extant family tradition of her authorship of the letter, and its style is not entirely consonant with that of her other teenage writings. As Claire Tomalin astutely observes:
The trouble with attributing this to her is that the letter is not an encouragement to The Loiterer to address women readers so much as a mockery of women’s poor taste in literature. ‘Sophia Sentiment’ is more likely to have been a transvestite, Henry or James.3
That view is supported by the conventions under which these periodicals operated. Like the make-believe of the letters themselves (often the work of the editor writing in various guises), gender masquerades were a regular feature, as far back as Jenny Distaff, half-sister of Steele’s fictional alias, Isaac Bickerstaff, in The Tatler (1709–11). In the pages of George Coleman’s weekly Connoisseur (1755–6), for example, such correspondents are to be met with as Dilly Dimple (‘a Pretty Miss in breeches’), Harriot Hare-Brain (‘a Blood in petticoats’), and Arabella Whimsey.4 Sophia Sentiment may well belong to this ambiguous company.5
What is certain is that, regardless of Sophia Sentiment’s true identity (male or female, Jane or Henry or James Austen or their sister Cassandra or cousin Eliza de Feuillide or any other female acquaintance who shared in their literary and dramatic enterprises), The Loiterer belongs to the period when Jane Austen was beginning to test her skill as a writer. Individual issues would have been prepared and discussed at Steventon in a sociably scribbling circle of family and friends. The reader easily discovers a conversation between the paper and Jane Austen’s developing teenage voice: their shared use of pseudo-Johnsonian prose and of the epistolary form, their playful engagement with conventional views of education and morality, and with the excesses of sensibility. Who can say precisely whether Jane’s opinions are openly expressed or ventriloquized in The Loiterer’s pages? For this reason, Sophia Sentiment’s letter merits consideration alongside Jane Austen’s three notebooks.
As Deirdre Le Faye first showed, Sophia Sentiment’s literary credentials are easier to trace than her precise biographical origins. The name derives from a character in William Hayley’s rhyming comedy The Mausoleum (1785).6 We know that Jane Austen acquired a set of Hayley’s works in 1791, but she could have read the play earlier. Perhaps, too, the later warnings of the dying Sophia in ‘Love and Friendship’ (‘Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint—’, p. 90) proceed from Sophia Sentiment’s recipe for literary titillation, voiced in The Loiterer: ‘as for his mistress, she will of course go mad; or if you will, you may kill the lady, and let the lover run mad’. Appropriately, the ninth number of the paper, in which Sophia Sentiment’s letter appears, was the first to include on its title page booksellers in Reading, not far from Jane’s home in north Hampshire, as among those stocking the periodical. Robin Vick sees the advertisement for issue 9 in the local newspaper, the Reading Mercury (on 6 Apr. 1789), as further support for Jane’s authorship, arguing that it may even have been placed not by the bookseller announcing his new wares but by James Austen himself, seeking to enhance his little sister’s pleasure ‘on seeing her first words in print’. It is a nice story, but pure speculation.7 Whether or not she wrote it, what is certain is that the letter grows out of and is reabsorbed into the same world of reading, writing, and literary fun as that of Jane Austen’s teenage fiction. Local sales of issue 9 emphasize the strength and versatility of these family ties.
No. IX.
OF THE
LOITERER.
Saturday, March 28, 1789.
Non venit ante suum nostra querela diem.
Ovid.*
The following letter was brought us the last week, while we were deliberating on a proper subject for the Loiterer; and as it is the first favour of the kind we have ever received from the fair sex (I mean in our capacity of authors)* we take the earliest opportunity of laying it before our readers, and hope the fair writer of it will consider our present eagerness to comply with her commands as some expiation for our past neglect, and will no longer condemn our paper as a pedantic performance, or set its authors down for old bachelors.
To the AUTHOR of the LOITERER.
Sir,
I write this to inform you that you are very much out of my good graces, and that, if you do not mend your manners, I shall soon drop your acquaintance. You must know, Sir, I am a great reader, and not to mention some hundred volumes of Novels and Plays, have, in the two last summers, actually got through all the entertaining papers of our most celebrated periodical writers, from the Tatler and Spectator to the Microcosm and the Olla Podrida.* Indeed I love a periodical work beyond any thing, especially those in which one meets with a great many stories, and where the papers are not too long.* I assure you my heart beat with joy when I first heard of your publication, which I immediately sent for, and have taken in ever since.
I am sorry, however, to say it, but really, Sir, I think it the stupidest work of the kind I ever saw: not but that some of the papers are well written; but then your subjects are so badly chosen, that they never interest one.—Only conceive, in eight papers, not one sentimental story about love and honour, and all that.—Not one Eastern Tale full of Bashas and Hermits, Pyramids and Mosques—no, not even an allegory or dream have yet made their appearance in the Loiterer.* Why, my dear Sir—what do you think we care about the way in which Oxford men spend their time and money—we, who have enough to do to spend our own. For my part, I never, but once, was at Oxford in my life, and I am sure I never wish to go there again—They dragged me through so many dismal chapels, dusty libraries, and greasy halls, that it gave me the vapours for two days afterwards.* As for your last paper, indeed, the story was good enough, but there was no love, and no lady in it, at least no young lady; and I wonder how you could be guilty of such an omission, especially when it could have been so easily avoided. Instead of retiring to Yorkshire, he might have fled into France, and there, you know, you might have made him fall in love with a French Paysanne, who might have turned out to be some great person.* Or you might have let him set fire to a convent, and c
arry off a nun, whom he might afterwards have converted, or any thing of that kind, just to have created a little bustle, and made the story more interesting.*
In short, you have never yet dedicated any one number to the amusement of our sex, and have taken no more notice of us, than if you thought, like the Turks, we had no souls.* From all which I do conclude, that you are neither more nor less than some old Fellow of a College, who never saw any thing of the world beyond the limits of the University, and never conversed with a female, except your bed-maker and laundress.* I therefore give you this advice, which you will follow as you value our favour, or your own reputation.—Let us hear no more of your Oxford Journals, your Homelys and Cockney:* but send them about their business, and get a new set of correspondents, from among the young of both sexes, but particularly ours; and let us see some nice affecting stories, relating the misfortunes of two lovers, who died suddenly, just as they were going to church.* Let the lover be killed in a duel, or lost at sea, or you may make him shoot himself, just as you please; and as for his mistress, she will of course go mad; or if you will, you may kill the lady, and let the lover run mad; only remember, whatever you do, that your hero and heroine must possess a great deal of feeling, and have very pretty names.* If you think fit to comply with this my injunction, you may expect to hear from me again, and perhaps I may even give you a little assistance;—but, if not—may your work be condemned to the pastry-cook’s shop, and may you always continue a bachelor, and be plagued with a maiden sister to keep house for you.*
Your’s, as you behave,
SOPHIA SENTIMENT.*
1 The text is taken from the first collected edition, issued in 2 vols. (Oxford, 1790).
2 Contributions are unsigned, but James Austen provided a key to their authorship in the final issue, no. 60.
3 Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life (London: Viking, 1997), 63.
4 George Coleman, The Connoisseur, 2 vols. (London: R. Baldwin, 1755–6), i, no. 52, 307–12; no. 56, 336.
5 For a range of views for and against Jane Austen’s authorship of the letter, see A. Walton Litz, ‘The Loiterer: A Reflection of Jane Austen’s Early Environment’, Review of English Studies, new series, 12 (1961), 251–61; Sir Zachary Cope, ‘Who Was Sophia Sentiment? Was She Jane Austen?’, Book Collector, 15 (1966), 143–51; John Gore, ‘Sophia Sentiment: Jane Austen?’, Jane Austen Society Reports, 2 (1966–75), 9–12. For a reassessment of the influence of the young James and Henry Austen’s journalism on their sister’s early literary experiments, see Li-Ping Geng, ‘The Loiterer and Jane Austen’s Literary Identity’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 13 (2001), 579–92; and The Loiterer, ed. Robert L. Mack (Lampeter: Edward Mellen Press, 2006).
6 Deirdre Le Faye, ‘Jane Austen and William Hayley’, Notes and Queries, 232 (1987), 25–6.
7 Robin Vick, ‘More on “Sophia Sentiment”’ ’, Jane Austen Society Reports, 5 (1996–2000), 218–20.
Abbreviations
JA Jane Austen
JEA James Edward Austen
E Emma
MP Mansfield Park
NA Northanger Abbey
P Persuasion
P&P Pride and Prejudice
S&S Sense and Sensibility
Catharine and Other Writings Jane Austen, Catharine and Other Writings, ed. Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993; repr. 2009)
Classical Dictionary Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London, [1785])
Family Record Deirdre le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
History of England Oliver Goldsmith, The History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II, 4 vols. (London, 1771)
Hume’s History of England David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 6 vols. (London, 1754–62)
Johnson’s Dictionary Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755)
Journal of a Tour James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (London, 1785)
Juvenilia Juvenilia, ed. Peter Sabor, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Letters Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)
Life of Johnson James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 2 vols. (London, 1791)
Love and Freindship Jane Austen, Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings, ed. Christine Alexander (London: Penguin, 2014)
Memoir A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections, ed. Kathryn Sutherland, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
Minor Works Jane Austen, Minor Works, ed. R. W. Chapman (1954); rev. B. C. Southam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969)
OED The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, 20 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), with revisions in the online edition up to 2016
Textual Notes
In correcting and revising her text, Jane Austen worked in much the same way as anyone writing by hand, then or now: she deleted words by striking through and by erasure (scrubbing out); she wrote alongside, above, and across old material, and, on occasion, she refashioned one word into another without the added clarity of either deletion or erasure; she inserted new text between the lines of old and, where corrections or revisions occurred immediately to her during the process of first writing down, new text emerged directly out of revised material. To capture this range of evidence, different symbols, brackets, and type styles are used, as shown in the following examples, where all forms of strikethrough and erasure are represented by a single strikeout line:
10.18–19 Characters ^of the party introduced[addition made above or between the lines of text]
116.23 arrived safe^ly^ in London[‘ly’ added as an inline insertion]
11.15 the concourse of masks[deletion]
25.11 Mr Willmot was a younger the representative[running deletion]
4.1 enamelled by ^with^[deletion and substitution inline]
11.32 by his side ^in their hand [deletion and substitution above or between the lines of text of one or more whole words]
55.16 most^re strictly [deletion and substitution above the line of part of a word ]
30.1 able to scarce(?) ^save [deletion of an uncertain word and substitution above the line]
22.25 my Lucy be united be united [deletion of a phrase repeated in error]
14.19 I’ll [tell] you why [square brackets to indicate missing text that has been editorially supplied ]
16.32 to > for one of my sex [one word refashioned as another—in this case ‘to’ refashioned as ‘for’]
14.13 interrupting > interrupted [a word altered by partial erasure and refashioning]
5.22 tender years of the party > young [one word erased and overwritten by another]
6.21 at > ignorant of [‘at’ erased and replaced by ‘ignorant’; angle brackets around ‘a loss’ to indicate a conjectural completion of the first version, editorially supplied ]
29.8–9 & El
All editorial comments within the Textual Notes appear in italics.
Volume the First
2.4 my ^muslin Cloak
3.4 Mother ^Father
3.8 politenness
3.10 attachment, ^either to the object beloved, or to
3.11 exceee > exceed[ingly]
4.1 enamelled by ^with^
4.23 rightly imagined ^them to be
5.22 tender years of the party > young couple
5.24 good deal longer(?) > older
5.33 Rouge ^Patches
5.34 endeavoured > endeavouring
6.14 With heavy h > a heavy heart JA anticipated
‘heavy’, omitting ‘a’
6.16 she little thought of in
6.17 she would ^should return
6.21 at > ignorant of
6.26 accordingly ^did &
7.1 blue coat, & entered &
7.23 Thro > Threw her sweet Body
7.30 Johnson > Roger
8.2 must ^first from ink and hand the alteration appears to have been made on an occasion distinct from the general copying of this piece
8.13 persuation > persuasion
9.12 But the Happiness f she had expected from ‘f’ anticipated ‘from’
10.4 Magesty’s cf. 37.18 ‘magestic’; see also Note on Spelling
10.8 once ^upon a time
10.8 twelvemonths
10.18–19 Characters ^of the party introduced
10.20 were ^both rather tall
10.28 agreable ^pleasing
11.4 Such was The Johnsons ‘Such was’ anticipated the following paragraph
11.15 the in convenience ^feirceness of his beams
11.15 the concourse of masks
11.25 attidude > attitude
11.32 by his side ^in their hand
12.21 so much her inferior ^Junior
13.6 perceived > discovered by partial deletion (per ^dis) and partial erasure and overwriting (ceived > covered), perhaps because ‘perceive’ follows three lines below
13.6 the ^unreturned affection
13.9 the sustained use of running marginal speech marks begins here; see Note on the Text
14.1 & had not might perhaps by this time … had not
14.7 the following Xmas ^Year
14.9 & fortune; but > she
