Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo by Richard Samuel (1778). The group to the left of the painting depicts Catherine Macaulay (far left) amongst other celebrated intellectual women (or ‘bluestockings’) of the day.
The contribution of eminent male thinkers to intellectual and public life is well documented: we all know our Kant from our Keynes, our Wittgenstein from our Wilberforce. It’s no secret that women and women’s issues have historically been granted less space on the political, philosophical and economic stages, and this deficit is unfortunately reflected in publishing history. In the ongoing cause for the recovery of women’s history, therefore, this blog highlights several works from our recent Economics, Politics and Philosophy catalogue which begin to tell the extraordinary and diverse story of women in Western social, political and economic history.
Virginia Woolf’s words about Mary Wollstonecraft – “we hear her voice and trace her influence even now among the living” – are as applicable today as they were in 1932. Often considered to be the mother of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft was a philosopher, war reporter, political and social activist and an educational reformist. A Vindication of the Rights of Men was the first in a series of retaliatory pamphlets sparked by the publication of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). In the form of a letter addressed to Burke, Wollstonecraft utilised Burke’s own style and language to point out the inconsistencies of his arguments, to attack his insistence on the importance of rank and privilege and object to his description of ordinary people as the “swinish multitude”. Many of the arguments which find fuller expression in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (1794) have their basis in this text. Her argument that many of Britain’s problems are rooted in the unequal distribution of property still rings particularly true.
Although the initially anonymous pamphlet was well-received, reviewed positively by all the major periodicals of the day, the publication of the second edition which revealed the identity of the writer brought a slew of criticism. The pamphlet began to be spoken of specifically as the work of a female writer and to be castigated for its ‘passion’ in contrast with Burke’s ‘reason’.
Mary Wollstonecraft (left) by John Opie (1790–1), Tate Britain Catherine Macaulay (right) by Robert Edge Pine (c. 1775), National Portrait Gallery
The copy is interestingly bound with the reaction of another female writer, Catherine Macaulay, to Burke’s Reflections. An accomplished and celebrated historian, and the first Englishwoman to become so, Macaulay’s objections to Burke’s assessment of the French Revolution were as impassioned as Wollstonecraft’s, and lead to a brief correspondence between the two women.
The Female Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves. Publicity album produced by the society. 1827 (Item sold)
Later known as the Female Society for Birmingham, this album is an early example of using shock tactics for the purpose of fundraising. It was intended to “waken attention, circulate information, and introduce to the notice of the affluent and influential classes… acknowledge of the real state of suffering and humiliation under which British Slaves yet groan” (Annual Report 1825). Donations collected were sent to anti-slavery groups in Britain or overseas.
Unlike the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (or the Anti-Slavery Society, established 1783), headed, amongst other leaders, by William Wilberforce, many women’s anti-slavery movements called for the immediate emancipation of all slaves, as opposed to the gradual phasing out of the trade. Women were denied membership to the Society for fear that they would push for a more radical action against slavery than many of the male leaders considered prudent. However, fundraising efforts of women’s groups such as those achieved by a publicity album such as this meant that over a fifth of the organisation’s financial support came from women. Despite this, women continued to be excluded from leadership roles of prominent anti-slavery organisations into the 1800s and the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves was set up in response to this. Elizabeth Heyrick was one of its founding members. In 1824 she published a pamphlet entitled Immediate not Gradual Abolition which set out the case for the total outlawing of slavery, rather than simply a gradual shift towards discontinuing the trade. She addressed the root of the problem which was that “The West Indian planters, have occupied much too prominent a place in the discussion of this great question. The abolitionists have shown a great deal too much politeness and accommodation towards these gentlemen.” Wilberforce’s society attempted to suppress this pamphlet and Society leaders were instructed not to speak at the meetings of women’s groups.
Detail from The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840 by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Several women campaigners were depicted in Haydon’s famous painting, including Anne Knight (bottom right)
In 1830, the Birmingham Society submitted a formal call to the Anti-Slavery Society to begin campaigning for the immediate abolition of slavery, threatening to withdraw its funding if the male leadership ignored their demands. The Society eventually agreed to drop the words “gradual abolition” from their aims.
Heyrick never lived to see the passing of the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1833 and women continued to be excluded from the conversation about international slavery. In 1840, an attempt to keep women delegates from appearing at the World Anti-Slavery Convention led abolitionist Anne Knight to begin campaigning for women’s rights. In 1847 she produced what is believed to be the first work for women’s suffrage.
Nellie Shaw, an anarchist feminist seamstress from Penge in Bromley, is a figure ripe for recovery from relative anonymity. She was one of the founding members of the Whiteway colony, a utopian community of free-thinkers established in 1898 in the Cotswolds. Their values were based on socialism, vegetarianism, self-sufficiency and a rejection of property laws. The deeds to the 41 acres of land originally bought by the colonists were burned on the end of a pitch fork as a symbolic gesture.
A member of the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour party, Shaw founded Whiteway with a group of friends after abandoning a previous communal living project in which she had encountered problems with its classist and sexist values. Whiteway was conceived as a community which would adhere to the values of gender equality and relative sexual freedom. Shaw’s account of the community’s early days is told with humour and tolerance, noting the various imperfections and absurdities of its initial members and detailing some of the problems of communal life.
The colony’s experimental style of life was greeted with suspicion and speculation from outsiders. It was rumoured to be a nudist colony, and sightseers would often arrive to try and ascertain whether this was true. In the 1920s, rumours of ‘free love’ and of the colony being home to dangerous “free thinkers and refugees” lead to it being seen as a national security risk. The police engaged a husband a wife to go undercover in the colony and report back on the lifestyles of these undesirables, but, although they couple alleged they had witnessed “promiscuous fornication”, no evidence could be produced.
Nellie Shaw remained at Whiteway for the rest of her life, writing her account of it thirty years after she first arrived. Although marriage was in no way prohibited amongst colonists, Nellie chose to exist in what she called a ‘free union’ with her partner Francis Sedlak, who was described in his obituary as “rebel Czech” and “Hegelian philosopher”. The decision of a number of its members to do likewise fuelled further prejudice about the community, leading to one woman being accused of adultery for taking another partner after her first relationship was ended by mutual agreement. Problems also arose at Whiteway in the domestic arrangements: Shaw relates that, while “The women do exactly the same kind of work as the men, and do not find it too tiring”, the washing and cleaning was left to the women alone.
While the deal seems inevitably to have been slightly harder on the female members of the community, Shaw’s vision of equality, shared labour and life lived for the benefit of the group is inspiring and instructive. Whiteway contains the text of a speech she gave to a young women’s group in Croydon shortly after the founding of the colony. While she paints a romantic picture of the colony’s rural setting – its “delightful valleys and well-wooded hills” – she does not obfuscate the challenges of community living:
Of course, there is another side to all this. Wet days, especially wet washing days, are very trying. Endeavouring to make old trousers into new knickerbockers, darning impossible socks, running out of some necessary item of food … but worst of all … finding in ourselves unexpected weak places, being impatient of other people’s failings, forgetting our own…
“But”, she tells us, “we must have patience and learn.” The colony at Whiteway survives to the present day.
First edition of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility in the original boards (1811).
In spite of becoming a twentieth-century pop-culture phenomenon, the inspiration for numerous romantic films and chick-lit publications, Jane Austen remains one of literature’s most significant novelists. Today, in honour of International Women’s Day, we’ll push aside the accumulated sentiment to look at Jane Austen as writer and author, and examine the publishing history of her novels.
Austen was born in Hampshire, England in 1775, the seventh and youngest child of George and Cassandra Austen. George was an Oxford-educated rector, and the family was comfortably middle-class, closely-knit, and engaged with literature and culture. George saw to it that his daughters, Cassandra and Jane, were both educated, and Jane developed her taste for reading and theatricals from activities within the family, including the influence of her older brothers, as well as the libraries she had access to during several years at boarding school. Influenced by authors such as Henry Fielding, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Richardson, she began writing stories and poetry at a young age, and many of her early pieces parodied the dramatic popular novels and histories of the era.
In the early 1790s Austen started composing full-length novels, beginning with Sense and Sensibility. It was not yet finished when, in 1796, she began work on “First Impressions”, the book that would become Pride and Prejudice. The first of her novels to be completed, this became a family favourite and was offered by her father to the publisher Thomas Cadell in 1797, but was turned down. Undaunted, Austen in 1798 and 99 completed her third novel, first titled “Susan”, and then “Catherine”, but renamed Northanger Abbey when it was later published posthumously. The rights to this third novel were sold to Richard Crosby & Son in 1803, though they failed to publish it.
Despite this setback, Austen and her family persisted in seeking publication, and they offered Sense and Sensibility to Thomas Egerton, who had previously printed James and Henry Austen’s Oxford periodical The Loiterer. As was common during the period, Austen was asked to pay for publication on a commission basis: Egerton fronted the money and the author was only paid after the printing costs and publisher’s commission were recouped. Henry Austen wrote that Jane was so concerned about the book not meeting the printing costs that she “made a reserve from her very moderate income to meet the expected loss” (Gilson p. 8). Austen, as she would be with each of her novels, was heavily involved in editing and preparing the text for publication, and wrote to her sister in spring of 1811 that, “No indeed, I am never too busy to think of S. & S. I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her sucking child… I have had two sheets to correct, but the last only brings us to W.s. first appearance. Mrs. K. regrets in the most flattering manner that she must wait till May, but I have scarcely a hope of its being out in June” (Gilson p. 8).
Sense & Sensibility finally appeared in October 1811 as a three volume set in a print run of fewer than 1,000 copies, priced 15 shillings each. Despite Austen’s fears, it was a success, selling quickly and garnering positive reviews. The copy pictured above is a first edition in the original boards. This is a truly rare survival, as the board bindings produced by early nineteenth-century publishers were relatively flimsy and not originally intended to be permanent. Those who could afford it usually preferred to have the book bound in leather. Below, an example of the title page, with the anonymous attribution “By A Lady”:
Title page of the first edition of Sense & Sensibility.
The first edition was sold out by July 1813, and a second edition was published by Egerton in October of that year, with some corrections and changes, but also a number of textual errors, and it sold only slowly.
Austen’s second novel, Pride and Prejudice, was first published in January of 1813, also in three volumes by Egerton, in a print run that was likely 1500 copies.
Five copies were sent to the author, and on 29 January she wrote that “I have got my own darling child from London” (Gilson p. 24).
Below, an example of a first edition bound in contemporary tree calf, along with the title page. Pride and Prejudice was Austen’s bestselling book during her lifetime, and a second edition was published by Egerton in 1813 (it’s easy to tell the difference between the first and second editions because “second edition” is stated on the title page), as well as a third edition in 1817.
First edition of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (1813).
It is clear from her letters and other primary sources that Austen was serious about her writing and eager to be published. She established a routine for writing and was freed from much of the burden of housekeeping by her close female relatives. Austen also “dealt directly and firmly with her two publishers, Thomas Egerton and John Murray, complained when they were dilatory, and took a close interest in the progress of each of her publications, the costs of printing and paper (for which she was liable), and the copyrights and subsequent editions. She was not ashamed of meaning to make money” (ODNB).
Most tellingly, she carefully planned ahead for an additional three novels, ambitious narratives that would subvert the traditional storylines and sentiments to which her earlier books had adhered. Mansfield Park was begun in 1811 and finished in the summer of 1813, to be published in three volumes by Egerton in 1814. The print run was only 1,250 copies, with the publisher John Murray later expressing “astonishment that so small an edition of such a work should have been sent into the world” (Gilson p. 49). Pictured below is a copy in contemporary half calf with marbled boards:
First edition of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814).
Title page to the first edition of Mansfield Park.
At this time Austen was becoming unhappy with the Egerton firm, feeling ignored and hoping for larger royalties and greater control over her work. Most importantly, she had been unable to make editorial changes to later editions of her previous novels, since the copyrights belonged to the publisher, who could do with the texts as he wished. So she approached another publisher, John Murray, who offered to print the second edition of Mansfield Park along with the first edition of her fourth novel, Emma. This is the only one of Jane Austen’s novels to bear a dedication, to the Prince Regent, the arrangement of which generated a richly comic correspondence between the author and the Prince Regent’s librarian. Both books appeared in 1816, and unfortunately competed with one another, reducing the number of copies sold and forcing Murray to remainder 539 of the 2,000 copies of Emma. Below, a first edition of Emma in contemporary black half calf with marbled boards:
First edition of Jane Austen’s Emma (1816).
Title page to the first edition of Emma.
Unfortunately, this disappointment was the culmination of Austen’s literary career. In 1816 she completed Persuasion, the third of her planned novels, but she also began having back pains, and by autumn was suffering severely from what was probably Addison’s disease. She soldiered on, and in January 1817 began a new novel, Sanditon, though very little had been written by March, when she became too ill to continue. Austen died aged 41 on the morning of 18 July 1817, with her closest companion, her sister Cassandra, at her bedside. Two more novels, the recently completed Persuasion and the older work Northanger Abbey (her brother had recently repurchased the copyright from Crosby), were published posthumously as a set in 1818. This was the first time that Austen was credited as the author of any of her books, and it also included a biographical note by her brother Henry, which was lavish (most have felt overly so) in its praise. The copy below is in a contemporary binding of half calf with marbled boards:
First edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818).
Title page to the first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.
Following this publication, Austen’s novels remained out of print for 12 years until the publisher Richard Bentley purchased the rights to all six books and in 1833 issued the first inexpensive editions, single volumes with an engraved frontispiece as illustration. His market was apparently the private buyer, as circulating libraries still had copies of the originals, and the lower cost allowed him to target the middle class. These early Bentley editions are more easily obtainable than true first editions of Austen’s books, and are very popular with collectors. Pictured below is the first Bentley edition of Mansfield Park in its original binding of purple calico with black labels to the spine. Like the first editions, Bentley’s editions were also available in more robust leather bindings, making these original, relatively fragile, cloth bindings uncommon.
First Richard Bentley edition of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1833).
Frontispiece to the first Bentley edition of Pride & Prejudice (1833). The Bentley editions were the first copies of any of Austen’s book to be illustrated.
Despite the Bentley editions, Austen remained a marginal author through much of the nineteenth century. It was not until the publication of her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 that interest in her was renewed and the first serious literary analyses of her novels were published. In 1892 J. M. Dent published the first collected edition of her works to include critical commentary (pictured below is a set of the Dent editions illustrated by C. E. Brock). The first scholarly editions, edited by R. W. Chapman, were published in 1923. These became the standard for future study and placed Austen firmly within the canon.
The insistence from some quarters that Austen’s work is romantic escapism, light reading revolving around unimportant women’s interests such as dresses and balls, is far from the truth. Inspired by a wide-ranging English literary tradition that included non-fiction, serious novels, and dramatic fiction, Austen used her intellect and unique wit to subvert and parody contemporary literary styles. She experimented with a variety of subjects and formulas, constantly innovated, and creatively incorporated a range of earlier material into her own books.
Though she didn’t write directly about what some consider “serious subjects” such as war or politics, she engaged with important social issues from a female perspective, notably class distinctions, the gulf between manners and morality, religion and hypocrisy among the upper classes, and women’s dependence on men. And while she was later portrayed by her nephew as demure and hesitant to be published, she was in fact serious about her role as author, dealing with her male publishers firmly and directly, and involving herself in all aspects of the publishing process.
Her impact on the world of English letters has been justifiably significant, and her books continue to be as engaging, humorous, and thought-provoking as they were in her own time.
The J. M. Dent edition of the collected works of Jane Austen, the first edition illustrated by C. E. Brock (1907).
The standard bibliographies of Jane Austen are A Bibliography of Jane Austen by David Gilson (Oak Knoll Press, revised edition 1997) and Jane Austen:A Bibliography by Geoffrey Keynes (Nonesuch Press, 1929). Both are available from used booksellers on websites such as ABE.
Austen’s letters are available online. The text is that of the 1952 edition of the collected letters edited by R. W. Chapman, and is hosted by the University of Virginia Library.
There are only two conclusively identified portraits of Jane Austen taken from life, both by her sister Cassandra. The most famous is this pencil and watercolour sketch c. 1810, which is held by the National Portrait Gallery. (The other is of the back of her head, probably a joke on her sister’s part.)
The Bodleian recently acquired the last substantial Austen manuscript still in private hands, the unfinished novel The Watsons.
In this amusing clip from her recent documentary From Elegance to Decadance: The Age of the Regency, historian Lucy Worsley discusses Jane Austen, her relationship to politics, and the infamous visit to the Prince Regent’s palace.
Recent Comments