Jane Austen and Her Times

by G. E. Mitton

Though we may not agree entirely with Mr. Gosse’s classification, this paragraph is suggestive.

As we have seen in her brother’s record, Jane’s favourites in prose and poetry respectively were Johnson and Cowper. These two are mentioned in one sentence of hers: “We have got Boswell’s Tour to the Hebrides, and are to have his Life of Johnson; and as some money will yet remain in Burdon’s hands, it is to be laid out in the purchase of Cowper’s works.”

She warmly admired Cowper, which is hardly wonderful, for, with some manifest differences, Cowper was trying to do in poetry what she did in prose. He was utterly lacking, of course, in her light vivacity of touch and sense of humour, but he did genuinely try to describe what he saw, not what he merely knew by hearing. The green fields and full rivers of the Olney country are depicted with fidelity to detail and clearness of line. Cowper was born in 1731, but his first volume of verse was not published until 1782, and it was not until The Task appeared a year or two later, with John Gilpin in the same volume, that he really came to his own.

In 1798, Jane writes: “My father reads Cowper to us in the morning to which I listen when I can.” This implies no disparagement of the poet, but merely that her numerous household duties did not always allow her time to listen. In Morland’s picture, “Domestic Happiness,” we have a scene which helps us to realise the family group at these readings. The mother and daughter in their caps, with elbow-sleeves and white kerchiefs, are dressed as Jane and her mother must have been, and the plain simplicity of the part of the room shown is quite in accordance with the rectory environment.

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS

Another of Jane’s favourite poets was Crabbe. Crabbe and Cowper are both rather heavy reading, and of both it may be said that their poetry is not poetical, but they are honestly seeking after truth and thus they attracted Jane Austen. They were amongst the earliest of the natural school which used the method of realism. Crabbe had a bitter struggle to obtain a hearing, but his struggle was over before 1796. Burke had taken him up, and in those days much depended on a patron. In 1781 he had published The Library, two years after The Village, and two years later again came The Newspaper, and then he did not bring out anything more until 1807.

It is, of course, very difficult to give any picture of contemporary literature in Jane Austen’s time without degenerating into mere strings of names. The fact that she herself came in contact with no one of the first rank in literature prevents any of the characters from being woven into her life. The books she mentions as having read are a mere drop in the ocean compared with the books which came out in her time, and which she probably, in some cases almost certainly, read. It was a brilliant age as regards writing. Perhaps the best way to give some general idea of those writers not already mentioned will be to divide the time into three sections; and, without any attempt at being exhaustive, to mention generally the leading names among the writers who lived on into her epoch, but whose best work had been published before her time; those who actually were contemporary in the sense that their books, by which their names are known, were published in her lifetime; and those whose names had not begun to be known when she died, though the owners were born in her epoch.

First, then, those whose work was done; foremost among these was Johnson, who has already been mentioned.