“An easy step to silence”: jane austen and the political context*

Abstract

Discussions of the “political” Jane Austen are multitudinous and often theory-based or theory-bound. By contrast, my essay is historical and biographical and sets out to show what part politics and political issues, as understood by Jane Austen and her contemporaries, played in her life and to what effect political experience enters her work. The contexts or scenarios I have chosen all impinged on Jane Austen personally: the Hanoverian Tory politics of the Austen family; the Stuart politics of her mother's family, the Leighs; Mr Austen's political “nous”; the party rivalries of Whigs and Tories; the French Revolution; and, as a coda, the slave trade.