Scholar Anne Hawkins estimates that almost five hundred women brought out novels between 1789 and 1824. One of those women was Jane Austen, whom you might have heard of. Another was Caroline Burney, author of Seraphina, or A Winter in Town (1809), who you probably haven't.
    One proviso: we can’t be certain that Caroline Burney was a woman. The name is probably a pseudonym, an attempt to cash in on the fame of Frances Burney and her half-sister Sarah Harriet Burney. When Sarah Harriet’s publisher brought out Traits of Nature, he advertised: “'The publisher of this Work thinks it proper to state that Miss Burney is not the Author of a Novel called "Seraphina," published in the year 1809, under the assumed name of Caroline Burney.” Well, Caroline Burney identified as a female, so that should be good enough for our purposes.
     In addition, the subtitle A Winter in Town is an echo of the best-selling A Winter in London by Thomas William Surr, which I reviewed here. According to scholar Chris Stevens, Surr’s novel created such a sensation that it briefly inspired its own “microgenre,” the “Season” novel, meaning of course the social season in London, Bath, Brighton, or wherever.  These “Season” novels featured wealthy and titled characters behaving badly. Sometimes these portraits were obviously based upon real people, which added to the appeal of the books. London as a sinkhole of vice was such a popular theme in novels that Jane Austen jokes about it in a letter to her sister Cassandra, quoted above.    
​    Some of the older novels I’ve been reading were reviewed in their day, but many came out to no fanfare, and Caroline Burney’s three-volume effort is one of those. So, out of fellow-feeling for these neglected authoresses, I’m instituting an occasional series of book reviews for novels that never got a book review. This post, (I think), is the very first review of Seraphina, or A Winter in Town...

      In my last post, I started a series about Mansfield Park and the theme of education. I think Jane Austen tells us repeatedly and directly that it is a novel about education and the consequences of failing to raise your children properly. Mansfield Park also teaches us that conflict often arises out of a clash of personalities, not something so theatrical as malice.
   The book opens with just such a clash. The marital fortunes of the three Ward sisters vary a great deal, and so do their tempers and personalities. The imprudent marriage of Frances Ward leads to an "absolute breach" between the sisters. Mrs. Norris, as Austen says with delightfully wry understatement, has a "spirit of activity" and she sends a scolding letter to Frances. Frances, nettled, writes back an angry letter which Mrs. Norris "could not possibly keep to herself."
  Lady Bertram, the former Miss Maria Ward, has a "temper remarkably easy and indolent." In giving up her sister Frances, she is guided, as she is in all things, by the meddling Mrs. Norris. The personality dynamic between Mrs. Norris and Lady Bertram has significant consequences throughout the story.
​    The word "personality" wasn't around in Austen's time, nor was the term "nature versus nurture," but the concepts certainly were. In addition to analyzing people in terms of their "tempers," the term “disposition” was frequently used to describe innate personality. 
​    Austen herself remarked in a letter about her great-nieces: “How soon, the difference of temper in Children appears! — Jemima has a very irritable bad Temper (her Mother says so) –and Julia a very sweet one, always pleased & happy.-I hope as Anna is so early sensible of its defects, that she will give Jemima’s disposition the early & steady attention it must require.” Likewise, when discussing her brother Charles's daughters, she wrote: "[Cassy] ought to be a very nice Child - Nature has done enough for her - but Method has been wanting... She will really be a very pleasing Child, if [her parents] will only exert themselves a little. - Harriet is a truely sweet-tempered little Darling."​​

 Introduction
  Mansfield Park is--by far--the most misunderstood of Jane Austen’s novels in modern times. Canadian author Douglas Glover says: "Mansfield Park is a brilliant book, a great book, breathtaking in its invention and orchestration. The British critic of the novel Q. D. Leavis called it 'the first modern novel in England.' And yet it is alien territory for the contemporary reader."
    This next series of blog posts is a resumption of my earlier discussion, last April, about Mansfield Park. ​Back then I disputed the contention that Mansfield Park is an extended symbolic protest of slavery. I’ve shared evidence to show that it was not controversial or dangerous to oppose slavery in Austen's day and many novelists did so. See here, here, and here.  In short, last year I discussed what I think Mansfield Park is not about. Now I plan to talk about what I think it is about.
     Notice that Glover speaks of invention and orchestration; his first focus is on Austen's craft. I hardly feel qualified to opine about the development of the novel, but I am afraid that many university students today are signing up to learn about English literature and they walk out having learned nothing about the development of the novel. This is because their professors are intent upon giving them a history lesson instead, a particular type of history which treats the past not as a chronicle of progress but a catalogue of crimes.
      Yes, Glover's "alien territory" refers to Austen's stern moral universe. If you have an understanding of the economics and the religious beliefs of the Regency period, then you can better understand that moral universe. You can also better understand what makes Austen a great author by studying her work in its literary as well as its historical context...