With it being Women’s History Month, I of course needed to include some Austen. Although I do think that many other wonderful female authors get ignored for Austen, she has a few different episodes that are my favourites in literary history. (Her voice and personality was so strong in everything that she did.) And one of my absolute favourites is a royal interaction… Jane Austen and the Prince Regent might not be the first pairing that you think of, but they have quite an interesting “meeting”…
The Prince Regent and Literature
Prinny, also known as the Prince of Wales and later known as King George IV, has made an appearance on the blog before as a Monarch of the Month. He is one of the most complex monarchs I’ve ever studied. He drank, ate, and gambled to excess, and he and his friends set only the most exclusive and expensive trends. However, he also took an active interest in culture and literature, and collected countless books, paintings, scultpures, and more. And as one might expect, a certain female author caught his literary eye…
Jane Austen on the Prince Regent
George and his wife Caroline had an infamously horrible marriage. He reportedly said that she smelled and had horrible hygiene, and thought her to be incredibly uncultured. (The kiss of death in a marriage like this.) And while those things might be true, Austen thought the Prince’s treatment of Caroline was the cause of the breakdown. She wrote in a letter, “I do not know what to do about it;––but if I must give up the Princess, I am resolved at least always to think that she would have been respectable, if the Prince had only behaved tolerably by her at first.”
The Prince in Austen
Austen satirised the Prince in several of her novels. For example, you can see him in John Thorpe of Northanger Abbey, the coarse, rude, thoughtless suitor who pursues Catharine. And yet somehow, the Prince Regent was one of her first patrons. He purchased both Sense and Sensiblity and Pride and Prejudice in their first editions. Word of his appreciation of her work reached Austen through Matthew Baillie, the Prince’s physician who came to treat her brother.
Austen was invited to tour Carlton House, and to actually dedicate her next novel to the Prince. Grudgingly, she did, and you can find this dedication in early editions of Emma: “To His Royal Highness, The Prince Regent. This work is, by his Royal Highness’s permission, most respectfully dedicated by His Royal Highness’s dutiful and obedient humble servant, The Author.”
Would you have gone the Austen route for your dedication?
Cheers,
The Historian
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