Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Maid in context …

… Not-so-quiet Jane Austen | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)


No letters from Jane Austen before 1796 survive. But Eliza wrote of her miscarriage in June 1792 after a mob attacked her coach during the Mount Street riots; and she was with the Austens that September when the Tuileries Palace was stormed and 14,000 were massacred in Paris, including women and children as young as eight. Eliza was again in close contact in 1794 when her husband was guillotined. Jane Austen learnt about this at “next to first-hand” and disliked the French thenceforth. Eliza was Jane Austen’s admired close friend, as well as her cousin; she loved the theatre, and her participation in the Austen family theatricals may have provided inspiration for the flirtation between Henry Crawford and Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park. Eliza also loved to flirt. Her second husband was Jane’s brother Henry.

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