Jane Austen’s Regency Dashwoods

by Allen Firth

Sense and Sensibility, India and the Cotswolds

Jane Austen’s family had strong links with the Cotswolds, including her Leigh relatives at Adlestrop and Longborough and Warren Hastings at Daylesford. Together with her frequent references to India and fascination for the high-profile Dashwood baronets with their home at Bourton-on-The-Hill, these provide motivation for her choice of Dashwood as the central family name in Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel, and shape some of its key themes.

362 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

Reviews

[Karen]

As far back as the 19th Century, Jane Austen’s commentators referred to her world as ‘a perfect orb’. In this fascinating and immaculately researched book, Dr. Firth explores her orb, the bubble in which she lived and worked, seeking to probe its boundaries and analyses how her works reflect her contemporary society. He takes a wider look at Jane Austen’s influences- both implicit and explicit. He has researched her family links to the Cotswolds and the people she would have known (and known of) within her circle of society and ties these together with wider cultural influences and sensibilities, in particular the general fascination with the exotic Indian fashions, flavours and art widely imported into Regency society by the East India Company and evidenced by local links with the Cockerells of Sezincote. Calling on many sources, both historical records and pursuing themes suggested by previous academic commentaries, the author creates a convincing Sense of the Sensibilities of Regency society and links these very knowledgeably back to the published novels and ephemera. A word of warning: be very familiar with Jane Austen’s novels, or be prepared to stop reading this book in order to reread at least ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Manfield Park’ ....