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In the first week of our HistoryExtra Academy Regency short course, Dr Lizzie Rogers explores the backdrop of Georgian Britain, and introduces one of its biggest characters: the Prince Regent
Regency Masterclass, with Dr Lizzie Rogers
Dr Lizzie Rogers and Charlotte Hodgman explore some of the key learnings from the recent HistoryExtra Academy Regency course
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How much have you learned about the Regency so far? Test your knowledge of your learnings in week four with our quiz
View Riddle on the source website Explore more content from week four of our Regency course: Slavery and Abolition, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 12 mins The children who fought for the abolition of slavery – reading time 10 mins The Haitian Revolution: the enslaved Africans who rose up against France – reading time 8 mins Did George III support the slave trade? – reading time 7 mins African American abolitionists in Britain – listening time 43 mins 9 key places connected to the abolition of the British slave trade – reading time 13 mins The Zong Massacre: what the dark episode meant for the British slave trade and abolition – reading time 8 mins David Olusoga on the extraordinary story of Olaudah Equiano - reading time 10 mins
Regency Britain: an age of war and revolution
Jane Austen’s lifetime coincided with near-constant conflict and bloodshed on both sides of the Atlantic
The American Revolutionary War (1775–83) Born eight months after the outbreak of the American Revolution, Jane Austen entered a world on the brink of seismic change. Although the conflict that ended with the independence of 13 North American colonies from British rule did not affect her directly, its geopolitical legacy shaped the world in which she came of age. During the 1760s and 1770s, colonists in North America grew increasingly frustrated with taxation by Britain, and by its legislative supremacy over their lives. In 1773, the Tea Act effectively gave the East India Company a monopoly on importing tea to America – and levied taxes on that tea, payable to the British Government. In response, colonists disguised as Mohawk Native Americans boarded British ships and dumped an entire shipment of tea into Boston Harbour – a protest known as the Boston Tea Party. Westminster responded by passing the Intolerable Acts, ending local self- government and commerce in Boston. Tensions boiled over in April 1775, when British troops in Massachusetts attempted to confiscate weapons in Lexington and Concord. When they met resisting local militia, the “shot heard ‘round the world” was fired – marking the start of the Revolutionary War. The following year, on 4 July 1776, delegates from 13 colonies assembled in Philadelphia declared their independence and established the United States of America. Over the next five years, on battlefields from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, the colonists – led by figures including George Washington – fought for liberty and self-governance. And, with support from France and other European powers, the tide turned in their favour. Signing the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain formally recognised the US as an independent nation, ending the conflict. But the ideals championed in that war opened the era of the Atlantic Revolutions. The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) On 22 August 1791, the French colony of Saint- Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, was shaken by an uprising. Inspired by the French Revolution, more than 100,000 enslaved Africans overthrew the oppressive regime, leaving many of its 8,000 plantations in ruins and more than 1,000 Europeans dead. The colony was the most lucrative in the Caribbean, producing around half of the world’s coffee and sugar, so in 1792 Paris dispatched a 6,000-strong force to pacify it. Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, in 1793 British and Spanish troops arrived on the island, exacerbating the turmoil as these European powers recruited people to their war aims. Amid this chaos, Toussaint L’Ouverture – who had been born into slavery on Saint-Domingue – emerged as a figurehead. In 1796/97, he became deputy governor and then commander-in- chief of the French forces and, after expelling the British and Spanish, he established a new regime over much of Hispaniola, assuming dictatorial powers and launching efforts to revive its damaged economy. In 1802, another French expedition ousted L’Ouverture and whisked him to France, where he died in captivity a year later. When Napoleon restored slavery in Saint-Domingue, the revolution erupted afresh and, led by the formerly enslaved Jean-Jacques Dessalines, revolutionary forces decisively expelled the French. On 1 January 1804, the Republic of Haiti – the first led by people of colour –was declared, galvanising the international anti-slavery movement. Just three years later, Britain’s Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was signed into law. Though Austen’s views on the Haitian Revolution aren’t known, many in her circle supported abolitionism. And both her brother Francis and the fictional Captain Wentworth in Persuasion were present at the Napoleonic battle of Santo Domingo (the Spanish colony on Hispaniola) in 1806, so Jane was clearly familiar with events on the island. The French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) Having provided support for the American independence cause, France's King Louis XVI grappled with a mounting economic crisis. In 1789, hunger and widespread discontent sparked revolution: on 14 July, a Parisian mob stormed the Bastille prison, reviled symbol of royal tyranny. But the movement's pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity - and the revolutionary government's aspiration to spread these principles beyond France's borders - spooked Europe's monarchies. Over time, factionalism and infighting split the revolutionaries. In an effort to rally national unity, the government targeted France's historic enemies, and in April 1792 declared war on Austria. Later, Louis and his Austrian-born queen, Marie Antoinette, were toppled and executed. A series of coalitions formed by European powers including Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia aimed to contain and reverse the revolutionary changes in France in wars spanning much of the next decade. These conflicts spread revolutionary and nationalist ideals, and pioneered strategies such as national conscription. But their most significant legacy would be the meteoric rise of a Corsican corporal, Napoleon Bonaparte. After a decade of turmoil, the 1802 Treaty of Amiens was signed by France and Britain, bringing to an end the Revolutionary Wars - though not auguring a lasting peace with France. The Austen family wasn't untouched by these events. Of Jane's brothers, Henry joined the Oxfordshire Militia, while Francis and Charles enlisted in the Royal Navy. Jane was horrified by a description by her cousin (and, later, sister-in-law) Eliza de Feuillide of her first husband's guillotining in 1794, during the bloody period of the French Revolution known as the Terror. Like her contemporaries, Jane eagerly followed events. She even sported an Egyptian-style 'Mamalouc' cap to a ball honouring Lord Nelson's victory over the French at the battle of the Nile. Did you know? Winston Churchill, musing on Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, once quipped: "What calm lives they had... No worries about the French Revolution, or the crushing struggles of the Napoleonic Wars" The Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) Jane Austen’s career as a writer reached its zenith during the series of wars involving Napoleonic France. Her most famous novels were penned as those conflicts raged and, though war itself is absent from her stories, the military characters she created, and the references to everyday hardship in her books, attest to her lived reality. Two of her brothers were fighting in the Royal Navy, and the threat of a French invasion of England remained credible until Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar in October 1805. Napoleon Bonaparte was a skilled military leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution. After seizing power in 1799, Napoleon – who later crowned himself Emperor of the French – aimed to establish an empire and exert his influence globally. Through military campaigns, he drove a rapid expansion of French territory, conquering numerous European nations and bringing them under his rule. His military victories – including in battles at Austerlitz in 1805 and Jena-Auerstedt in 1806 – demonstrated his tactical brilliance and reshaped the political landscape of the continent. Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria and other nations joined forces in coalitions pushing back against Napoleonic France. A series of battles and campaigns followed, notably the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal, and the Russian campaign of 1812. Despite his military prowess, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia proved disastrous, and led to his first abdication in April 1814, followed by exile to the Mediterranean island of Elba. The following year, while European statesmen were gathered in Vienna to establish a new continental order, Napoleon escaped from Elba and landed in southern France. Arriving in Paris in March 1815, he resumed hostilities – culminating in French defeat at the battle of Waterloo in June 1815 by a combined British and Prussian force led by the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Napoleon was subsequently exiled once more, to the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, marking the end of the Napoleonic era and decades of warfare. The War of 1812 (1812–15) In a letter dated 2 September 1814, Jane Austen wrote: “I place my hope of better things on a claim to the protection of Heaven, as a Religious Nation, a Nation in spite of much Evil improving in Religion, which I cannot believe the Americans to possess.” Despite her reticence in discussing many of the global events that defined her era, the coincidence of this scathing verdict with a conflict then raging in North America is perhaps telling. So-called ‘War Hawks’ in Congress asserted that Britain’s presence in Canada posed a threat to the US, and called for military action. Tensions had arisen as a direct result of two decades of near-constant warfare between Britain and France. Factors that frustrated the US included impressment (forced recruitment) into the Royal Navy of American sailors believed to be deserters; competing Anglo-French trade restrictions imposed on neutral powers such as the US; and British support for Native American resistance to US expansion westwards across North America. So, on 18 June 1812, the US declared war on Britain, launching a conflict that would last nearly three years. Despite initial American naval victories, the British were able to maintain blockades of key US ports. On 24 August 1814, in retaliation for American attacks on York (modern-day Toronto), British soldiers burned public buildings in Washington DC – including the White House and the Capitol. War fatigue and economic stresses forced both sides to the negotiating table, and on 24 December 1814 the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Even so, the distances involved delayed ratification of the treaty by Congress until 16 February 1815 – after US victory at the battle of New Orleans on 8 January. Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen – reading time 6 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins
Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen
Beneath the genteel surface of decorous society, unrest simmered in the world – and works – of Jane Austen
While the novels of Jane Austen might suggest an endless schedule of middle- and upper-class gaiety, disgruntlement was rumbling beneath the surface across the country – and, during this tail end of the Georgian era, it often erupted in violent, sometimes lethal protest. Not that Austen herself completely ignored what was happening in the country beyond Barton Cottage and Netherfield Park. For instance, her fifth novel, Northanger Abbey, refers to the unrest erupting in England’s larger cities. Although she writes about a riot as imagined by one of the characters, the rather visceral description depicts: “a mob of three thousand men assembling in St George’s Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood”. Whether real or imagined, Austen’s inspiration for this tableau does seem to have come from real-life events. The episode appears to be a conflation of at least two separate disturbances that occurred prior to Northanger Abbey’s publication. In 1808, perhaps 6,000 weavers from the local – and rapidly growing – textile industry in Manchester gathered in St George’s Fields to protest about the lack of a minimum wage in their trade. Eight years later, not long before Austen’s novel was published, another riot broke out in London at the end of a hitherto peaceful protest. During the violence, the rioters even planned to attack the Tower of London – so it was surely not mere coincidence that Austen’s imagined account of the unrest included the Tower being “threatened”. Fighting for fair pay The weavers’ protest in Manchester may have been violent but it did achieve a modicum of success. Though dragoons were called in to restore peace (and one protester died during this response), the rioting was replicated in surrounding towns in Lancashire, and the weavers won a small concession in the form of a modest rise in their wages. Some scholars of Jane Austen believe that the Gordon Riots of 1780 also contributed to her description in Northanger Abbey, though those events took place when the author was only four years old. In particular, these scholars cite her reference to a deadly disturbance during which “the streets of London [were] flowing with blood”, as well as an attack on the Bank of England. The Gordon Riots were certainly bloody, a violent response to the Papists Act 1778, which aimed to reduce discrimination faced by Catholics. Anti-Catholic protests, led by the head of the Protestant Association, Lord George Gordon, exploded into chaos, with a week of rioting, burning and looting following in the capital, resulting in several hundred deaths. Religion was also the cause of the 1791 Priestley Riots in Birmingham, in which non-Anglicans who supported the French Revolution were attacked and their property damaged or destroyed. Local taxation was the reason for the Bristol Bridge Riot two years later; the militia were called to quell this disturbance, and 11 people died. Headstrong heroines As well as including occasional references to events playing out across the country, Austen didn’t confine her social commentary to the romantic politics of the gentry. Although by no means a polemical feminist, she put the disparity between men and women in the late Georgian period at the heart of her novels. They focus heavily on marriage, the ways women are defined by their husband, and what society’s expectations of women. Women seldom owned property; they couldn’t vote; they were barred from higher education; and they were rarely able to access prestigious professions. Certainly, a middle-class woman who had to work was looked down upon. Despite the absence of women’s rights, Austen’s headstrong heroines are by no means shrinking violets in their marriages or in their pursuit of suitable husbands. Although she can’t give her female characters the rights that society has denied them, Austen does empower them with purpose and intent. Women lower down the social strata simply had to work if their husband’s income wasn’t sufficient – those who were married, that is. Women were also required to maintain a functioning household, even when conditions beyond their control intervened. Such conditions arose in 1795, when a savagely cold winter brought the average temperature in the English Midlands down below –3°C. When the rivers thawed, great floods raged, so that crops didn’t grow, and animals couldn’t graze. Angry women tackled the resulting food scarcity head-on in what was later dubbed the ‘Revolt of the Housewives’ or the ‘Food Riots’. Unscrupulous merchants took full advantage of the fact that demand far outstripped supply, pushing up the prices of items such as flour and meat – but the rioters weren’t having high prices dictated to them. They seized merchants’ goods and sold them at what they believed were true market prices, giving the proceeds to the merchants. Such direct action was one way that women, with no electoral power, could effect change. But other people were also denied the vote in Austen’s time. Indeed, only 200,000 individuals – all of them property-owning men – had the vote. So a wave of vociferous reformers fiercely pushed for a large-scale extension of electoral suffrage – in the face of equally implacable opposition. Did you know? Initial goverment responses to the Gordon Riots were weak and badly planned. But when the army was called out to protect the Bank of England on 7 June 1780, the result was mass bloodshed – around 285 protesters were shot dead. Boasting nearly 30 MPs among its ranks, the Society of the Friends of the People filed a petition in the House of Commons in 1793, demanding electoral reform. This was heavily quashed in a parliamentary vote by MPs concerned about the redistribution of power to the masses after the French Revolution four years earlier. And while that Society was trying to put the subject of reform on the political agenda, organisations such as the Hampden Clubs and the London Corresponding Society, whose more radical proposals included extending the vote to all adults, met with even greater opposition. It wasn’t until the Reform Act of 1832 that the growing metropolis of Manchester gained any representation in the Commons. Unsurprisingly, then, the protection of entrenched interests in Parliament, and the means by which this was legitimised by a very limited notion of democracy, poured extra fuel on the bonfire of disquiet that flared among large swathes of the population. Problems at the pinnacle While the fabric of wider society was being unpicked, unease also proliferated right at the pinnacle of the British elite. While George III bounced between bouts of madness and lucidity, the threat of a constitutional crisis always hung heavy in the air. In 1788, a bill was passed in the Commons that would see the king’s eldest son, another George, become regent. The king emerged intact from that episode of mental ill health, and the bill was withdrawn before it had progressed through the House of Lords. By 1811, though, his insanity had become permanent, and another regency bill successfully negotiated its way through Parliament. With the Care of King During His Illness etc Act 1811, George III was replaced as head of state by his son, who eventually became King George IV on his father’s death in 1820. By then, Jane Austen had also died, passing away three years earlier, in 1817, at the age of just 41. Her great success and renown arrived only posthumously. Yet her legacy proved to be not only her artfully plotted novels, populated by enduring characters, but also her ability to depict – albeit subtly – the late Georgian period as it approached the crossroads of change. The industrial age cometh Austen’s writing did little to reflect the vast changes taking place in Britain’s cities Jane Austen’s novels might be set on rolling country estates and in well-heeled towns and cities, but the Industrial Revolution was well underway during her lifetime. Although more commonly associated with the early Victorian age, industrial development was progressing at lightning speed during Austen’s lifetime, and the largely rural economy that had dominated the countryside was being undermined. Towns and cities grew rapidly, their skylines soaring and their populations booming. The nature and pace of everyday life was irrevocably changed within a generation, and the world became driven by steam, not horse. Who knows what themes Austen’s novels might have touched on had she been born 50 years later, or if she’d grown up in the dirty heart of a city dominated by factories and chimneys. As it is, her works remain lasting memorials to a fading, possibly more innocent era. Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins 1816: the year without summer – reading time 9 mins Regency Britain: An age of war and revolution – reading time 6 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins
Two centuries ago, Britons had to endure biting cold and driving rain from April to August. They blamed everyone from Napoleon to Benjamin Franklin for the filthy weather but, says Robert Hume, the real culprit was far more remote
Lake Geneva, 1 June 1816. An "almost perpetual rain" confined the small group of writers to the house. The night was stormy. In the mountains lightning flashed from peak to peak. In a letter to her half sister, Mary Shelley wrote: The lake was lit up, the pines on Jura made visible, and all the scene illuminated for an instant, when a pitchy blackness succeeded, and the thunder came in frightful bursts over our heads amid the darkness." Shelley was not the only famous writer to complain about the weather in the summer of 1816. "Oh! It rains again," lamented Jane Austen from her home in Chawton, Hampshire, on 9 July. “Such weather gives one little temptation to be out. It is really too bad, & has been for a long time, much worse than anybody can bear, & I begin to think it will never be fine again.” The painter JMW Turner captured driving rain and red-tinged clouds in his painting Lancaster Sands, while Shelley drew inspiration from that “wet, ungenial summer” to write her classic novel, Frankenstein. Shelley, Austen and Turner’s words and watercolour provide a glimpse of an extraordinary summer, unlike anything anyone could remember. People across the northern hemisphere shivered and sought shelter as, for month after month, they were assailed by freezing temperatures and relentless rain. Ireland suffered no less than eight weeks of precipitation. Nationalist politician Daniel O’Connell grumbled about the “dreadful weather... There is nothing but rain and wretchedness.” Travellers felt the full brunt of these pelting rains. In France, Lady Caroline Capel was drenched to the skin from “the torrents of rain that here follow every day”, while in Switzerland it bucketed down on 130 out of 152 days between April and August. It was also extremely cold. Ice four inches thick was recorded in Essex at the end of August. Visiting London, John Quincy Adams was astonished to find fires lit in almost every house. “There has not been one night when a coverlet and blanket could have been thrown off with comfort,” noted the future US president in his diary. But in his country too “teeth chattered”, as one woman visiting New Hampshire wrote. Although there were occasional mild days, the cold bit deeply. In Plymouth, Connecticut, a clockmaker still remembered many years later going to work, dressed in thick woollen clothes and an overcoat: “My hands got so cold that I was obliged to lay down my tools and put on a pair of mittens.” Vermont saw 18 inches of snowfall in June. Farmers tried to tie fleeces back on to recently shorn sheep, but most of the poor animals still froze. On the bitter night of 6/7 June, when icicles nearly a foot long were reported, the feet of an 88-year-old man froze and his toes had to be amputated. Not without good reason did contemporaries call 1816 ‘Eighteen-Hundred-And- Froze-To-Death’. “The whole country is in a very disastrous state,” declared The Times on 5 September 1816. Dead fish floated on the surface of ponds, scores of birds lay dead on the ground. Crops crumbled into frosty mush. Outside Maidstone, Kent, wheat and barley were ruined by hailstones “as large as nuts”; frost devastated hops in Worcester; and in Barnet, north London, the livelihoods of haymakers were destroyed by the incessant rain. Seemingly, nowhere in Europe was spared. It was remarked in Portugal how the unusually cool weather had “evil consequences” on fruit, making it unpleasant to taste. Switzerland suffered more than any other country. Both grape and grain harvests were ruined, and thousands of peasants were forced to beg. Across the Atlantic, no corn could be gathered in New Hampshire and people in Vermont were reduced to foraging for nettles, wild turnips and hedgehogs. Bread prices rocketed. In Paris a loaf that had cost 16 sous in the spring quickly rose to 32. The price more than tripled in Switzerland, and hostesses asked guests to bring their own loaves to dinner parties. Riots broke out in East Anglia in late May, when labourers armed with pitchforks and carrying banners saying “Bread or Blood” marched on Ely and held its magistrates hostage. Banging kettles and blowing horns, hundreds of protestors gathered in Guildford in October, and demolished the house of a baker whose prices, they said, were too high. It was not until November that the Corn Laws allowed cheaper foreign grain into Britain. Some turned to emigration as a solution. Forty families from a Protestant sect in Württemberg, Germany, set off for the Holy Land. During a single week more than 700 men, women and children applied to leave Ireland where potatoes had failed, wheat fields were black, and oats lay flattened by rain. To remain was to risk catching typhus fever, which struck down more than 60,000 inhabitants between 1816 and 1819. As cold numbed the eastern United States, many farmers headed west. Wagons piled high with household goods trundled towards milder Ohio. Among those who left Vermont for western New York state was Joseph Smith, future founder of the Mormon religion. End of the world The weather showed no signs of relenting, and the gloom deepened. Lord Byron composed his poem Darkness, while his fellow poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge made a bleak reference to the “end of the World Weather”. As The Times tried reassuring readers that such prophesies were farfetched, 62-year-old Eleanor Saunders, a London servant, hanged herself in “a fit of melancholy”. For those living in 1816, these extraordinary events were baffling and unsettling. Something had gone seriously wrong with the weather. All sorts of explanations were concocted to make sense of what was happening. Noticing a large irregular spot on the surface of the sun, surrounded by many other spots, some contemporary astronomers claimed that they were responsible for blocking out heat. A Bologna astronomer asserted that the sun was “ill”, that it would become encrusted in sunspots and plunge the Earth into darkness. Although the greatest astronomer of the day, William Herschel, argued that sunspots were too small to harm the weather, the public remained sceptical. Cold north-easterly winds, and large masses of ice floating in the Great Lakes were also blamed for keeping the air much cooler than normal. But a German writer put the cold down to a lack of gunpowder in the atmosphere following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, which had enabled cold air to sneak in. Even Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States, was apparently responsible. Franklin was an enthusiastic exponent of placing lightning conductor rods on buildings, so they could draw out “electrical fire” before lightning could strike. His critics argued that the rods had stopped the Earth releasing heat into the atmosphere and condemned people to perpetual winter. The disturbance was ascribed by others to a higher being. “By the breath of God frost is given,” mused one Vermont newspaper, quoting Old Testament scripture, while the Missionary Herald magazine went further to proclaim: “God has expressed His displeasure towards the inhabitants of the Earth by withholding the ordinary rains and sunshine.” Terrified by what seemed a looming apocalypse, people from Ghent to Gothenburg crammed into churches to pray for an improvement in the weather. In France processions were hastily organised to beg God’s forgiveness: 80 young women paraded through the streets of Paris in late July, holding lighted candles and praying for the rain to stop. But it went on and on. When prayers failed, outlandish theories gained plausibility. English satirist William Hone found a sure culprit in the former French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte who, after returning from his exile on St Helena in 1815, had invaded the sun in revenge for his defeat at Waterloo. The sunspots were nothing but shadows created by different parts of his body. Pirates attack But the real culprit for the weather disturbance was not a higher being, nor was it the fault of Napoleon. Shortly before sunset on 5 April 1815, a series of explosions had shaken the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia. Local chiefs attributed the blasts to the spirit queen Nyai Loro Kidul celebrating the marriage of one of her children. British soldiers 800 miles away on Java mistook the sounds for cannon fire from ships under attack from pirates. Over the next few days, the explosions gradually subsided. But around seven o’clock on the evening of 10 April, Mount Tambora, their true source, erupted again. This time the explosions were much louder. Cascading lava slammed into the ocean, creating tsunamis 15-foot high. Trees were torn up; people, cattle and horses swept away; houses flat- tened. The village of Tambora disappeared. Showers of thick ash began to fall, and by 11 o’clock it was so black, according to one ship’s captain, that he could not see his hand even when held right up against his eye. When the eruptions finally stopped some three months later, on 15 July 1815, around 12,000 people were dead. Winds gradually carried Tambora’s huge cloud of sulphurous gases westward, throw- ing the world’s weather into chaos for the next three years. No one at the time linked a remote Indonesian volcano to the torrential rains and freezing temperatures across Europe and North America in 1816 – in fact, scientists didn’t establish a link between volcanic eruptions and climate change until the second half of the 20th century. In recent years extreme weather has provided plenty of material for Britain’s favourite topic of conversation: sunshine to freak storms in just five minutes; hail stones as large as golf balls; floods regularly deluging towns. In the future, climate change might cause such events to be more the norm than the exception. Since an “effusive volcanic eruption” ranks highly on the current UK National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies, we might also have to suffer the catastrophic effects of another year without a summer. Dr Robert Hume is a writer and former head of history at Clarendon House Grammar School, Kent Toxic pea soupers. Five extreme weather events to strike Britain 1. The Great Frost, 1683–84 The Great Frost of 1683–84 saw the Thames frozen solid to a depth of nearly two feet. Londoners made the most of it by creating a frost fair consisting of shops, taverns, coffee and chocolate sellers, and even a brothel. Other amusements included puppet shows, carriage races and bear-baiting. James Chipperfield exhibited a menagerie of performing animals on the frozen river. From the week before Christmas until early February, the frost fair was the place to be. Charles II is supposed to have enjoyed a spit-roasted ox there. 2 . The Great Storm, 1703 On 26 November 1703, booming thunder terrified southern England. Houses collapsed, and 4,000 oaks were destroyed in the New Forest. At sea, shipwrecks killed a third of the navy, and the 120-foot Eddystone Lighthouse was swept away. In Whitstable, Kent, witnesses described a ship being lifted from the water and tossed 800 feet ashore by a waterspout. At his palace in Wells, Somerset, a falling chimney stack killed Bishop Richard Kidder and his wife in their bed. The lead roofing was ripped off Westminster Abbey, and at St James’s Palace, Queen Anne was forced to spend the night sheltering in a wine cellar. 3. Avalanche in Lewes, 1836 Heavy snowfall began across south-east England on 24 December 1836 and continued over Christmas. In East Sussex, 20 feet of snow had accumulated on Cliffe Hill, Lewes, whipped up by the wind into a great ledge overhanging its western side. People were warned to leave their homes, but nobody obeyed. At about 10.15 in the morning of 27 December snow plummeted down the steep slope towards a row of workers’ cottages, killing eight inhabitants. “The mass appeared to strike the houses first at the base, heaving them upwards, and then breaking over them like a gigantic wave,” reported The Sussex Weekly Advertiser. 4. The Great Smog, London, 1952 The mix of fog and smoke from factories and fireplaces that blanketed London on 5 December 1952 was unlike any ‘pea-souper’ the city had seen before. With no wind to disperse it, the toxic yellowy smog remained for five long days, killing more than 4,000 people. Transport was brought to a standstill. Pedestrians could not see their feet, and there were instances of some falling into the Thames. Smog seeped into buildings, and theatres closed because the audience could not see the stage. Prize cattle on show at Earls Court choked to death. Thieves had a “busy time”, commented The Guardian. 5. The drought of 1976 With perfect blue skies and record hours of sunshine, summer 1976 was a time of barbecues,dips in London fountains, and long queues for ice creams and cold drinks. At Wimbledon ball boys fainted and 400 spectators experienced heatstroke in one day. Even Big Ben suffered metal fatigue and stopped chiming. When reservoirs dried up, the government imposed a hosepipe ban. Householders were asked to use bathwater on their gardens, and to flush the toilet less often. Britain appointed a minister for drought, Denis Howell, who was nicknamed minister for rain when, during his first few days in office, the heavens opened. Explore more content from week three of our Regency course: War and Conflict, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 11 mins Uncertainty and unrest: the madness of the Regency period – reading time 8 mins Peterloo: the story of a massacre – listening time 37 mins Reading between the lines: the real-life events that inspired Jane Austen – reading time 6 mins Regency Britain: An age of war and revolution – reading time 6 mins The Napoleonic Wars: everything you wanted to know – listening time 1 hour, 3 mins The Peterloo Massacre: what did it achieve? – reading time 6 mins
At first glance, Jane Austen’s life seems to have been uneventful – but those initial appearances are somewhat deceptive
On 16 December 1816, her 41st birthday, Jane Austen wrote a letter to her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh. Edward, as he was known, had recently gone to study at Oxford. Perhaps gently poking fun at Edward, a budding novelist, she wrote of his “strong, manly, spirited Sketches, full of variety and Glow”. Discussing her own work, she asked modestly: “How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much Labour?”Austen was comparing herself to a miniraturist, painting tiny portraits. The letter, held at the British Library, is one of about 160 by Jane Austen to have survived. It is significant because it’s rare and, more subtly, because it seems to confirm what we think we know about Austen. Here is the spinster chronicler of the domestic, a writer who famously saw no need to directly reference the Napoleonic Wars (1803– 15) in her fiction. Yet this sketch, suggesting someone living a modest life, is at best only a partial picture. In her own lifetime, Austen was a successful novelist. Although she never married, she was part of a large family. In A Memoir of Jane Austen (1869), Edward describes her as “the delight of all her nephews and nieces”. She was also someone whose place in society – essentially that of the poor relation – meant that she observed the English landed gentry up close without the sense of security and status enjoyed by those who inherited or married money. Cultural capital Jane was born in 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father, George (1731–1805), was the rector. Though the Reverend Austen’s family had made money as wool merchants, George’s branch weren’t well off. In 1764, he married Cassandra Leigh (1739–1827), whose father was a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1768 until the turn of the century, the Austens lived in Steventon’s rectory. Jane had six brothers and a beloved older sister, Cassandra (1773–1845). George supplemented his modest clerical income by farming and teaching. Though money was perennially tight, the Austens – a close and warm family - had cultural capital aplenty. Ideas were discussed freely in a home that often welcomed visitors from the wider world. Well educated by the standards of her time, Jane was able to access her father’s library and that of a family friend, colonial administrator Warren Hastings (1732–1818). In addition, family and friends staged plays. From a young age, Jane wrote poems, plays and stories, often with the kind of satirical edge familiar from her novels. It was an apprenticeship for a professional writing career that began in earnest around 1795, though it was not until 1811 that one of her novels, Sense and Sensibility, made it into print. Jane never married, though she was attracted to Tom Lefroy (1776–1889), a dashing and intelligent trainee barrister from Ireland. Marriage between the pair was impossible, because neither had any money. In 1802, Jane briefly accepted a proposal from Harris Bigg-Wither, the charmless heir to extensive estates, but immediately regretted her decision and recanted her acceptance. In their different ways, both of these men appear to correspond to Austen archetypes. Era of uncertainty In 1800, George unexpectedly decided to retire from the church, heralding an period of uncertainty in Jane’s life. The following year, the Austen family moved to Bath, where George and Cassandra had married. In 1805, George died, which left Jane, her sister and their mother in a precarious financial position. Cassandra later destroyed a cache of Jane’s letters from this period, which suggests it was a difficult time. In 1809, after a period living in Southampton, the Austen women at last began to enjoy a more settled life again. They moved to Chawton, Hampshire, where Jane’s brother Edward gifted them the use of a cottage after he inherited the Elizabethan country pile Chawton House from a childless cousin, Thomas Knight. Jane’s literary life came fully into focus in Chawton, though her books were initially published anonymously, as was common in this period. But then, in 1816, just as her career began building momentum following the publication of Emma (1815), Jane fell ill. She died in July 1817, possibly from Addison’s disease or Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Since 1833, Jane Austen’s novels have never been out of print. But why are they so popular? One answer may lie in the idea that Jane wrote about marriage, money, status and family not because these were small themes but because, for women of her class, these represented huge forces shaping their lives. Think of her less as a miniaturist, more as a supremely gifted writer who focused on the most revealing details. Austen's literary contemporaries We look at four fellow writers of the 18th and early 19th centuries who proved influential in Jane’s life and work Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) Whereas Austen subtly chronicled women’s lives, Mary Wollstonecraft (novelist Mary Shelley’s mother) railed at the patriarchy. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), she argued that women were not – as many men rather conveniently supposed – inherently inferior to men, but were denied education and opportunities. Ann Radcliffe (1764–1823) The Gothic stories penned by Radcliffe, the most popular novelist of her era, were dark romances. Austen satirised Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) in the posthumously published Northanger Abbey (1817). This probably affected Radcliffe’s reputation, which has recovered in recent years as scholars have reassessed her work. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) A towering literary figure in his day, Scott’s well-known novels include Waverley (1814), Rob Roy (1817) and Ivanhoe (1819). Though his own work was widescreen and romantic, he was a huge admirer of Austen’s fiction – and, as is clear in both of their writings, the feeling was mutual. James Stanier Clarke (1766–1834) In 1805, Clarke became librarian to George, Prince of Wales, later both the monarch and an Austen fanboy. Clarke helpfully offered writing advice to Jane. In response to his mansplaining, she wrote a humorous essay, ‘Plan of a Novel, according To Hints from Various Quarters’, which wasn’t published until long after her death. Explore more content from week two of our Regency course: Regency culture, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 12 mins Everything you wanted to know about Jane Austen's England –reading time 7 mins The Romantics: everything you wanted to know – listening time 39 mins Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: the birth of a gothic monster – reading time 6 mins How to survive a Regency marriage – reading time 7 mins Visiting Brighton Royal Pavilion, the Prince Regent's decadent getaway – reading time 3 mins
Anyone who has read Jane Austen will have an idea of how much effort a high society woman in Regency Britain gave to finding a husband. Felicity Day lays out what they needed to know, how they could meet that special someone, and why getting married had its dangers...
Weigh up the pros and cons before tying the knot Marriage was socially expected, but it certainly had its drawbacks Marriage was “the great object of female hope according to one (male) writer of the Regency period. He mused that it was “the natural wish and expectation of every amiable girl, to settle happily in marriage”. Becoming a wife certainly did have advantages, offering the chance for a woman to break free from constant chaperonage and to become (respectably) a mother. There was a profound stigma associated with single life, too, with spinsters the subject of much derision. Yet matrimony had definite downsides. A wife in the Regency period – the late Georgian era, commonly considered to stretch from around 1790 to 1830 – lost various legal rights and potentially some of her property the moment she said ‘I do’. Her husband could lawfully beat and imprison her, and prevent her seeing their children. Love and companionship aside, marriage did not look particularly enticing. And contrary to what we’re often told, if you were a woman from a wealthy, aristocratic family, staying single was usually a viable option. In fact, Emily Nugent, Marchioness of Westmeath, who found herself shackled to a serially unfaithful and abusive husband, became convinced that she would have been better off had she never married. She could have lived comfortably on the combined income of her £15,000 marriage portion and inheritance from an unmarried aunt, together giving her as much as £1,300 a year – more than triple what many clergymen earned. Emily could have joined those single ladies who made homes for themselves in Mayfair and continued to take part in the social round. Put in the hard work if you do want to make a match Finding a suitor wasn’t easy, and women had to be seen in the right places For the many women who did want to marry, or at least wanted to do what was expected, their best chance of making a match was to throw themselves into the Regency season. This whirl of balls and parties took place between roughly late January and early July, when aristocratic families flooded into town for the parliamentary session. “Spring campaigning” was what earl’s daughter Lady Sarah Spencer called the frenetic social mingling, and like any campaign, it required both strategy and stamina. Any marriage-minded woman needed to be seen at all the right places, and perhaps at two or three of them in a single evening. These would not just be the most talked-about balls and concerts, but the assembly rooms and the opera – the latter being the place where members of ‘the ton’ (British high society) gathered twice a week, less interested in the singing than the gossiping, flirting and people-watching. Perfecting your dance steps, and being physically fit enough to dance in a stuffy ballroom for hours on end, was essential. Balls were not only the best place to be introduced to eligible partners; standing up for a dance was one of the few opportunities for a couple to engage in a tête-à-tête. At a comfortable distance from her chaperone, a woman could flirt with a suitor, encourage his attentions and assess his opinions. Competition could be fierce, especially as a flurry of new debutantes made their ‘come out’ every year, and tactics could be dirty. These ranged from the sending of anonymous letters imparting uncomplimentary information, clearly designed to frustrate a potential match, to parents over-inflating the amount of their daughter’s fortune. The latter, at least, was inevitable, given that money – like good looks – went a long way to putting men and women ahead of their rivals. Pick someone your parents will approve of Once the perfect partner was found, it was time to get consent and talk marriage contracts Once women had successfully navigated the choppy waters of the marriage market, all that remained was to get parental approval. Consent from a father or guardian was only required by law for those wanting to tie the knot under the age of 21, but because parents were usually in charge of dispensing their share of the family fortune, well-born lovers of all ages usually considered it a necessary evil. Objections came for many reasons. Lady Williams-Wynn was loath to approve her 24-year-old daughter’s marriage with a neighbouring landowner old enough to be her father. As for Lord and Lady Petre, the difference in status (and no doubt fortune) seems to have been the reason why they resolutely failed to consider their son’s tutor a fitting partner for their daughter, Julia. The Duke and Duchess of Rutland, meanwhile, wanted to be assured of their daughter Elizabeth’s favoured suitor having an income of at least £3,500 a year. Partly what motivated the Rutlands was a desire for Elizabeth to have a reasonable sum of pin money. Contractual provisions for this independent, annual allowance, along with a widow’s annuity – both typically set out in a marriage settlement – were not to be spurned lightly by a high society bride. They gave her a measure of financial security not available to those lower down the social ladder. So, too, did the prenuptial trusts conventionally created by the aristocracy as part of the settlement process. These ensured that instead of a woman’s property transferring directly to a husband the minute the knot was tied, it was ring- fenced for her benefit. If all else fails, elope A small village became famous with couples and feared among parents: Gretna Green If a woman couldn’t win consent for her match, or simply got fed up of waiting for her family’s lawyers to wrangle over the terms of the settlement, she and her lover might have made a bolt for the Scottish border. Since Scotland refused to adopt the provisions of the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 – which required under-21s to have parental consent - it was a haven for minors desperate to marry but lacking permission. The most obvious destination was Gretna Green: as the first village to be reached via the main coach road from London, it became home to a veritable marriage industry. Elopement was not without risk for a woman, though. Her reputation would be utterly ruined if she did not return home a wedded wife. Nor was it an easy option financially. Outpacing any pursuers required a post chaise and four horses, and then there was the fee for the minister. When, in 1811, Viscount Deerhurst took to Gretna Green his second wife – Lady Mary Beauclerk, reputedly heiress to a fortune of £100,000, who was helped out of her house by her faithful maid – it was said that the ‘parson’ who married them (in reality, a former peddler named David Laing) pocketed 100 guineas. For such a sum, he would probably have given the wedding a quasi-religious tone. In fact, it might not have felt so different to the most modish aristocratic ceremonies, often held in the drawing room of the bride’s home and witnessed by only a handful of guests. Prepare to be pregnant, a lot Being a mother was a Regency wife’s duty, but one done at great risk Most women expected to fall pregnant fairly quickly after their marriage. Some even felt they were failing in their duty to a husband – to provide him with a son and heir – if they were not soon with child. Pregnancy itself was not usually a great trial – it was perfectly permissible to carry on with normal life right up until the baby arrived – nor was the care of children, as long as you married into the aristocracy and could afford nurses to do a lot of the work. But what one mother described as the “dreadful operation” of childbirth could be an ordeal, one that women went through at least six or seven times on average. Childbirth was a frightening prospect. Most Regency women knew of someone who had died in labour or soon afterwards. When preparing for her much-wanted wedding in August 1810, one 17-year-old bride must have been dismayed by the news that two of her acquaintances had died in that month alone during childbirth, both of them only 22 years old. Even if a woman did come through labour safely, frequent childbearing would have taken a fatal toll on their health. After making her own love match at 18, Maria, Viscountess Duncannon spent much of her adult life pregnant, only to die aged 46, five years after giving birth for the 15th time. Remember, marriage isn't always for life While trickier for a woman, divorces and separations were possible By no means was it guaranteed for a Regency couple to reach their 25th wedding anniversary, and not just because of the risks of childbirth or the rise of incurable diseases, such as consumption. It was possible – among the upper classes, at least – to end a union by choice. Unable to suppress their illicit passion for one another any longer, Henry, Lord Paget, a dashing cavalry officer, and mother of four Lady Charlotte Wellesely broke up their individual marriages in sensational style when they eloped with each other from London’s Green Park in 1809. Two divorces followed, after which the couple wed and had 10 children. For a woman, obtaining a divorce from an unfaithful spouse was always more of a challenge than the other way around – especially a parliamentary divorce, the only kind which allowed remarriage. Unlike her husband, a wife could not sue on the basis of adultery alone, but had to prove an aggravating offence, such as bigamy or incest. But there was a popular and more private alternative: a formal separation, the terms of which could be negotiated out of court. This kept the couple’s marital complaints hidden from the gossip-loving ladies of the ton. Runaway lovers Lady Mary Beauclerk and Lord Deerhurst were among those who legally separated when they parted a few years after their aforementioned elopement. During their short marriage, it seems neither of them remained faithful. Reportedly, Mary had affairs with not one but two of Deerhurst’s younger brothers. For all that, however, it would be wrong to think that there were no loving, long- lasting unions in this period. Delve into history and you’re sure to find plenty of real-life Regency romances. Explore more content from week two of our Regency course: Regency culture, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 12 mins Everything you wanted to know about Jane Austen's England –reading time 7 mins Becoming Jane Austen – reading time 4 mins The Romantics: everything you wanted to know – listening time 39 mins Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: the birth of a gothic monster – reading time 6 mins Visiting Brighton Royal Pavilion, the Prince Regent's decadent getaway – reading time 3 mins
Visiting Brighton Royal Pavilion, the Prince Regent's decadent getaway
The Prince of Wales wanted something bold and spectacular when he built a pleasure palace in the seaside town of Brighton, and that is exactly what he got
There is a sight you cannot miss on the Old Steine thoroughfare of Brighton, as it stands out so brashly against the backdrop of this English seaside town. The Royal Pavilion – with an Indian-style exterior and Chinese- influenced interior, blending with Regency-era gardens – exudes both opulence and the exotic. The palace was the decadent getaway of George, Prince of Wales and son of George III. Vain and hedonistic, he enjoyed dining, dancing and drinking to go with his gambling, racing and womanising. He first came to Brighton in 1783, aged 21, already suffering from a life of excess, which his physicians hoped the therapeutic seawater could alleviate. Instead, George hired architect Henry Holland to enlarge his modest lodging house into a neoclassical villa. As the years went by, all the while with George throwing parties and showing off the Chinese furnishings, this ‘Marine Pavilion’ grew. Most notably, he added extravagant glass-domed stables, large enough for 62 horses, and sleeping quarters for the grooms. (They are now home to a museum and concert hall.) The major redesign that transformed the pavilion into today’s structure began in 1815, after George became Regent. Using cast-iron frames, architect John Nash built a host of domes, minarets and towers on top of the original roof, giving it an Indian aesthetic. New rooms for entertaining were luxuriously decorated and state-of-the-art heating, gas lighting and plumbing installed. The garden similarly received an overhaul, complete with Regency-style winding paths, flower beds, shrubs and lawns. Nash needed eight years and a fortune to finish, by which time George was King. In a cruel twist, though, George had grown so overweight and suffered from numerous maladies that he could only visit his magnificent, eccentric palace twice more before his death in 1830. People's palace Ultimately, it would be the people of Brighton who benefited from the Royal Pavilion, not least because it helped the town’s reputation as a fashionable destination. William IV visited regularly and his successor, Victoria, first stayed there shortly after her coronation. The 18-year- old Queen, however, described the palace in her diary as “a strange, odd Chinese-looking thing”. Although Victoria’s impression did improve over successive trips with Albert and their growing family, she never felt at ease there. In 1850, she sold the pavilion to the town of Brighton for £53,000. Less than a year later, the palace re-opened to the public for the cost of sixpence, but having lost much of its splendour, as Victoria had ordered the decorations and fittings to be stripped – they supposedly filled 143 wagons. Yet as the Royal Pavilion continued to be maintained and used for a host of functions, from balls and exhibitions to lectures by Oscar Wilde, many royal items returned. Restoration gathered momentum in the 20th century, bringing the Royal Pavilion and its gardens back to the Regency-era style, but there was still another unexpected use for the buildings. During World War I, the lavish rooms became a hospital – at first for wounded Indian soldiers, and then British Army amputees. Stories and photographs from this remarkable chapter are on display in one of the pavilion’s galleries. The whole history of the Royal Pavilion can be explored by walking its rooms or strolling the gardens, preferably with the audio guide. The pavilion may have been built as a personal pleasure palace, but it is now part of the city’s image and a charming feature in anyone’s trip to Brighton. What to look for... Banqueting room A fitting space for a royal feast, even one of George IV’s. The chandelier is held in the talons of a dragon, one of the many that can be spotted around the hall. Great kitchen So sophisticated were the kitchen’s facilities that George would take his guests for a tour. Later, during World War I, it would be used as an operating theatre. Music room The elaborate decoration, including a ceiling of some 26,000 gilded cockleshells, has been badly damaged twice – in a fire in 1975 and a storm in 1987. King's apartments These had to be moved to the ground floor to prevent the portly George from climbing stairs. His bed has a tipping mechanism to make it easier to get in and out. Gardens The Regency-style garden underwent major restoration in the 1980s and ’90s using John Nash’s plans, and they are still maintained with George’s original plant lists. India gate The gateway at the southern entrance was unveiled on 26 October 1921 as a gesture of thanks for the care shown to Indian soldiers in World War I. How to visit Head to www.brightonmuseums.org.uk/visit/royal-pavilion-garden for more information, including ticket and travel details Explore more content from week two of our Regency course: Regency culture, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 12 mins Everything you wanted to know about Jane Austen's England –reading time 7 mins Becoming Jane Austen – reading time 4 mins The Romantics: everything you wanted to know – listening time 39 mins Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: the birth of a gothic monster – reading time 6 mins How to survive a Regency marriage – reading time 7 mins
Everything you wanted to know about Jane Austen's England
Dr Lizzie Rogers answers questions about the author and the social conventions of the world in which she lived and wrote
What do we know about Jane Austen's life? Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775, the seventh of eight children born to Reverend George Austen and Cassandra Leigh Austen. The family lived in Hampshire, where George was a cleric, and Austen spent the first two to three decades of her life there. Although she and her sister, Cassandra, went to school for a while, most of their education took place at home. After her father retired in 1800, Austen spent some time in Bath, but after her father’s death in 1805 until 1809, she, her mother, sister, and their friend Martha Lloyd were forced to live off the kindness of relatives, since they had little income of their own. In 1809, Austen’s brother, Edward, offered them a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire – now Jane Austen’s House Museum – and it was there that she edited a lot of her early writing, including early versions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. Austen started publishing her work in 1811, with Sense and Sensibility being her first novel, but all her works were published anonymously, initially as “By a Lady” and then as “the author of [previous book]”. Sadly, Jane’s health started to decline, and she died on 18 July 1817, in Winchester, at the age of 41; she was buried in Winchester Cathedral. What was the Austen family’s position in Regency society? Austen and her family were part of what is often referred to as the ‘pseudo- gentry’. While they had connections to wealthier families and established gentry, their own financial status was sometimes unstable. Austen’s brother Edward was adopted by a wealthy childless couple, the Knights, who owned the Chawton estate in Hampshire, and the two sisters didn’t have large marriage dowries, which were important during the Regency period. So, although the family wasn’t impoverished, money was occasionally a concern. But Austen enjoyed an artistically and culturally rich life, with access to her father’s extensive library of over 300 books, and she and her siblings were encouraged to read widely. Her early writings, known as her juvenilia, offer an interesting reflection of the society in which she mixed, with its expectations for women, concerns about financial stability, and the role of marriage as a tool for security. What can Austen’s work tell us about Regency attitudes towards marriage? Marriage during the late 18th and early 19th centuries was a complex affair. Although marriage for love was becoming more common, many married for stability, and some, especially the upper classes, married to guard their fortunes and assets, and to strengthen political alliances. In Austen’s six published novels, she presents a variety of these concerns; we see romance, but it often comes with caveats. While I can’t claim to know the marriage patterns of everyone during this period, it’s safe to say that unions between different strata of the upper class – as with Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice – did happen, albeit with much consideration given to dowries, connections, and other factors. There were also several real-life cases of people marrying between completely different classes, including Emma Hamilton, who rose from humble beginnings to marry wealthy collector William Hamilton and then went on to have an affair with Lord Nelson. So, societal boundaries were fluid, depending on the right circumstances. In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs Bennet claims Mr Darcy has an income of £10,000 a year. How aware were people of others’ wealth? If we consider inflation alone, Mr Darcy’s wealth today would be around £1m a year. But if we look at it in terms of the assets that he owned, I’ve seen research suggesting that his wealth would be equivalent to about £12m annually, so it’s no wonder Mrs Bennet thinks that he would be a good catch for her daughters! In general, I think people had a fair understanding of others’ wealth. They may not have known all the assets someone possessed, but would have had a good idea. As demonstrated by the period drama Bridgerton, for instance, we can see that wealth was often discussed through scandal sheets and gossip, which would have definitely played a part in public knowledge about an individual’s wealth, including the properties they claimed to own. Furthermore, there were situations where people were thought to be wealthy, but were actually just managing their assets discreetly. We see this exemplified in Austen’s Persuasion, where Sir Walter Eliot, a spendthrift, has exhausted all his funds at Kellynch Hall, forcing him to rent it out. Yet he continues to rely on his status as a baronet to maintain appearances. It’s also important to note as well that a great deal of wealth was derived from land ownership at this time. What would life have been like for the lower classes in this period? Austen’s writing often features women in situations similar to her own – or those who are slightly more affluent – as these were the circles she was familiar with and operated within. In Mansfield Park, we get a brief glimpse of the lower classes through Fanny Price’s family, which is significantly less well-off than the wealthy Bertrams who adopt her. Portsmouth’s living conditions, particularly the Prices’ overcrowded house, are a stark contrast to Austen’s own environment. Similarly, in Emma, we meet Harriet Smith, a girl of uncertain parentage whose schooling is funded by a benefactor. Although such glimpses are rare, they provide fascinating insights into the lives of the lower classes. And while such lives may have been more labour-intensive, there is no reason to suggest that they were any less fulfilling. In fact, women from these parts of society would have likely had more personal freedom and opportunities to earn their own income and engage in different professions. They would have also been less restricted by property-related constraints. What were women’s rights like at this time? Although Austen died just over a century before (some) British women got the vote in 1918, women’s rightswere already under discussion. During Austen’s own lifetime, we see the publication of influential works by Mary Wollstonecraft, including A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, the latter being published in 1787. And there was a surge of discourse about women’s rights during this period, which emerged from the intellectual era known as the Enlightenment, generally regarded as spanning the 18th century. A growing number of thinkers began to contemplate women’s knowledge, their potential for learning, and their possible roles in society, and these discussions led to a variety of intriguing opinions, too numerous to encapsulate here. The crucial point, though, is the increased volume of writing focusing on women during this period. Many of these texts resonate with our contemporary understandings, which perhaps explains why figures like Wollstonecraft remain respected in the history of women’s writing. Her advocacy for equality, urging women to recognise and demand equal standing, is timeless. Mapping Jane Austen’s life against this historical backdrop makes her journey through these transformative 41 years all the more intriguing. Were female writers accepted and respected? I think it largely depended on the circles in which these individuals moved, but there were several very well respected female authors during this period. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Mary Wollstonecraft was one, but Austen herself was also a great admirer of the satirical novelist Frances Burney – we even find Austen’s name on the subscription list of one of Burney’s novels – and she was also a big fan of Ann Radcliffe, who helped pioneer the genre of Gothic fiction. It’s also important to mention the ‘Bluestockings’ in this context – an 18th-century circle of female writers, artists and thinkers led by an aristocratic woman named Elizabeth Montagu. They received considerable acclaim, despite the inevitable controversy that sometimes surrounded women who led in such pursuits. A testament to the recognition of the Bluestockings is a 1777 print by the English artist Richard Samuel, known as The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain, which celebrates its nine female subjects for their intellectual prowess and gives us a surprisingly pleasant glimpse into contemporary attitudes towards women’s achievements during this period. It’s been suggested that, in Persuasion, Anne Elliot’s negative opinion of Bath reflects Austen’s own views on the city. Is this the case? Today, Bath is most commonly associated with the Romans – and Jane Austen. However, considering her lack of literary output during her time there, it’s clear that Austen’s stay in Bath was a period of highs and lows. Austen’s time in Bath followed 25 years of happiness in Steventon, and it was during her stay in the city that her father passed away. She likely had a complex relationship with the city, primarily because it was the backdrop for some of her life’s most significant sorrows and, as a creative individual, the marked decrease in her literary output whilstin Bath serves as a telling indicator of her state of mind. What impact did Austen’s ill-health have on her writing? Ill-health and consequent periods of confinement meant that Austen likely had ample time to write, and I believe – though this is merely speculation on my part – that her struggles with poor health might well have instilled in her a renewed sense of purpose and determination in her work. It’s commonly believed that Austen had Addison’s disease [a rare disorder of the adrenal glands], a condition that is now considerably more treatable and manageable. Back then, however, without a proper diagnosis, her health challenges remained largely a mystery. This may have given her a heightened awareness of her aspirations and what she wanted to achieve, while at the same time making her conscious of her physical limitations. Interestingly, we find instances of illness, often with a comedic twist, in her novels as well. The depiction of Mrs Bennet with her dramatic bouts of ill heath, nerves and hypochondria come to mind, suggesting that Austen managed to retain a sense of positivity despite her personal struggles. Explore more content from week two of our Regency course: Regency culture, with Dr Lizzie Rogers – watching time 12 mins Becoming Jane Austen – reading time 4 mins The Romantics: everything you wanted to know – listening time 39 mins Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: the birth of a gothic monster – reading time 6 mins How to survive a Regency marriage – reading time 7 mins Visiting Brighton Royal Pavilion, the Prince Regent's decadent getaway – reading time 3 mins