L&T Archive 1998-2003

MT: Political Jane

Here's a link to B.C. Southam's "An Easy Step to Silence: Jane Austen and the Political Context, a 1998 article on JA's political affiliations, noting that her family were staunch Tories, both politically and culturally (the Loiterer), who used Tory channels of naval patronage through their connection with Warren Hastings. Her mother's family had been pro-Stuart, if not outright Jacobites. Her cousin Eliza Hancock lost her husband, the Comte de Feuillade, to the guillotine. Altogether a pretty conservative millieu.

Austen herself criticized the Ministry of All the Talents for its abortive attempts to negotiate peace with Napoleon in 1806-07. According to one of her nieces, she carried her adolescent admiration for the Stuarts in general and Charles I in particular into her later life.

Messages In This Thread

MT: Political Jane
Fascinating article - thanks for posting it. nfm
Mary, Queen of Scots / The Stuarts
I agree.....
JA was sixteen nfm
Again, those Hastingses
Not same family..
Shinjinee, I knew I could rely on you
The changing political atmosphere