Jane Austen and Her Times

by G. E. Mitton

Walpole was considerably past middle-age at her birth, and died in 1797; Wesley’s collected Works came out in 1771, and he died in 1791; Adam Smith preceded him by a year.

The seventies in the eighteenth century produced numerous brilliant men and women whose names still live; besides Jane Austen herself, we have Sir Walter Scott, Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Lamb, Sir Humphry Davy, Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Hogg, Thomas Moore, and Thomas Campbell, who were all born in this decade, though, as the development of a writer differs enormously in growth, some of them were much later in making their appearance in print than others. Among the better known names of women novelists not already mentioned we have Miss Edgeworth, Jane Austen’s senior by eight years, whose first novel, Castle Rackrent, was published anonymously in 1800. That Jane knew and admired her work is obvious from the fact that she sent her a copy of Emma for a present on its publication. Mrs. Inchbald, born in 1753, was at first known as an actress, her Simple Story, by which she is best remembered, was published in 1791. Mrs. Radcliffe, whose romances induced Jane Austen to write Northanger Abbey in mockery, was very busy between 1789 and 1797, during which time she published five novels, including her famous Mysteries of Udolpho in 1794. Joanna Baillie published a volume of verse in 1790, and her first volume of plays in 1798; though almost forgotten now, she was taken very seriously in her time, and her play De Montfort was produced at Drury Lane in 1800 by Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. Anna Seward, who was born in 1747, lived to 1809; she, like Hannah More, was far more praised and valued than any of her poor little productions warranted.

Sheridan brought out his famous play The Rivals in the year of Jane’s birth; it was at first a dead failure, but, nothing daunted, he cut it about and altered it, and when reproduced two years subsequently it attained success at once. The same year saw The School for Scandal, and the following one The Critic. In this year also the first volume of Gibbon’s great History appeared.

Burns, who had written some of his best work while Jane was still a child, died in 1796, and the brilliant Burke the succeeding year.

Just to give some general idea of the wonderful fruitfulness of this epoch it may also be mentioned that Samuel Rogers’ Pleasures of Memory came out in 1792; Lyrical Ballads, including Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner and some of Wordsworth’s poems, in 1798; Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope in 1799.

Byron was thirteen years younger than Jane, yet his precocity was so great that his first book, Hours of Idleness, was produced in 1807. The first two cantos of Childe Harold followed in 1812, but the whole poem was not completed until Jane was in her grave; the Giaour, Corsair, etc., she must have known as new books a year or two before her death.

Southey’s Thalaba came out in the first year of the new century, and Thomas Moore published the first of his Irish Melodies in 1807.

Scott’s literary career began with the publication of a translation of Burger’s “Lenore” in 1799, between that date and 1814 his poems appeared at intervals, and in 1814 his first great novel Waverley. Though it was anonymous, Jane seems to have discovered the secret of the authorship, for she writes: “Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet and ought not to be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths. I do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but I fear I must.” But she was not the only one to make such a conjecture, for Miss Mitford having read Waverley also imputes it unhesitatingly to him, she says, “If there be any belief in internal evidence it must be his.” Judging by these two specimens, the secret of Scott’s anonymity was not the great mystery it is generally imagined to have been.

The third period, that of the great men who were actually contemporary with Jane Austen, though she was unconscious of their existence, as they did not win their laurels until after her death, is of course much less interesting, and may be quickly dismissed, such names as those of Lingard and Hallam among historians; Mill, Hazlitt, and De Quincey belong by right of birth to an earlier epoch, though their works place them in this.

Miss Ferrier and Miss Mitford, too, were not much younger than Jane Austen, but neither had brought out anything noticeable before her death. Miss Ferrier’s first novel, Marriage, made its appearance in 1818; and though Miss Mitford had written poems, her Our Village first appeared in the Lady’s Magazine only in 1819. As we have seen, Miss Mitford was a scholar at the same school as Jane Austen, though many years later. She was also a native of Jane’s county, Hants.