I am reading novels which mention Mary Wollstonecraft, which means I will be reading novels by authors who can be broadly defined as conservative. Wollstonecraft is cited in these novels as an example to be avoided.
   Mary Anne Hanway’s huge four volume novel has got me thinking about which opinions and attitudes held by educated people of Austen’s day were coded as conservative or liberal. For example, you might assume conservatives were pro-slavery and progressives were abolitionist. It’s not that simple. Hanway champions many causes we would think of as progressive, but in this novel she clearly aligns herself with the establishment against the Jacobins. I’ll expand on that later. For now, let’s try and grapple with the many plots and characters of the sprawling epic that is Andrew Stuart, the Northern Wanderer. This is a long synopsis, but even so I haven’t fully shown how all the different plots end up tying together.
   ​   Andrew starts his life as a poor crofter’s son, herding sheep in the Scottish highlands. His grandfather was a Jacobite (not to be confused with a Jacobin), a follower of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and hence the family’s fortunes have suffered for backing the wrong political horse. So our hero is not of peasant stock, but still, Andrew (and the other main characters in this novel) start from the humblest of beginnings. He runs away from home at nine years old, eager to see the world beyond his little patch of the Highlands. Hanway notes that the Scottish peasantry willingly share their scanty meals with the boy in his travels, but once he reaches the great city, he’s in danger of starving to death. This is one of many occasions in the book when she praises common folk and excoriates the wealthy and privileged.

      Well, this is yet another novel taking aim at the follies of people in High Society. This three-volume novel lacks plot but is teeming with characters--more characters than you'll want to keep track of or care about. It is also filled with anecdotes of real-life nobility, under pseudonyms like Tumly St. Dragon Skeleton or Sir Jeremy Haphazzard, or ellisions such as Duke of Cl----e or Lady *****.  As an example, I recognized "Miss Linley Short" as the heiress Catherine Tylney Long who turned down a marriage proposal from the impoverished Duke of Clarence, later King William IV. There is also a lengthy section in volume II discussing "Lady Naples," who is none other than Emma, Lady Hamilton, the mistress of Lord Nelson. She is spotted shopping in a jeweler's. “That woman's as big as a whale,” sneers one character, while the other gives a sympathetic version of her life history. I did not chase down any other references.
       How wise Jane Austen was to refrain from this kind of thing. References to the scandals of the day or to famous personages would have dated her novels.
      In other words, this novel purveys gossip, salacious and otherwise, and even features lots of Regency slang. Now, here is the tricky bit--much of the gossip is disguised as not-gossip because it's presented along with moralizing. We're only talking about folly, dissipation, and immorality so as to hold the mirror up to vice, folks!...

   I first learned about the anti-Jacobins and the culture war that raged between supporters of the French Revolution versus the conservative old guard in Marilyn Butler’s important book, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975). 
  Jacobins were one of the revolutionary groups that turned France upside down during the Reign of Terror which followed the overthrow of the monarchy. The British establishment and of course, many ordinary patriotic Britons, were worried about revolutionary fervor spreading across the Channel. While progressives such as Tom Paine hailed the reform (or overthrow) of organized religion, primogeniture, and the aristocracy, conservative-minded folk also picked up their quill pens to defend the status quo. Some founded The Anti-Jacobin Review to warn about the dangers of political radicalism. This included castigating French philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire, and German writers like Goethe and Kotzbue. Once you delve into the back and forth, there is a shock of recognition--it’s comparable to the cultural and political wars raging today.
    Conservatives (and I am using the word as a descriptor, not a slur) saw not only a political threat but a threat to established social customs. They particularly feared any liberalization of divorce laws or any whiff of what today we would call feminism. Some authors used satire and ridicule  to combat progressive ideas, notably Elizabeth Hamilton in her Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800). In the example below, the author of Scenes of Life used the direct attack to condemn the new radicalism and progressivism. 

    Scenes of Life (1805) by Thomas Harral, is my first anti-Jacobin novel, which is surprising, considering that I’ve read about 150 sentimental novels so far. I’ve read some novels that mention the French Revolution, but this is the first novel that really nails its colours to the mast—this was written for the express purpose of combating the pernicious and radical new ideas that threatened to seep across the Channel and poison the traditional virtues of British public and private life.
    The way author Thomas Harral has gone about it, is to write a conventional sentimental novel featuring a brother and sister who lose their father and their fortune, but triumph in the end. Interspersed throughout the story are long editorials from the narrator and several of the male characters as well, who collectively have a lot to say about female education, the dangerous immorality of German plays, and the “trash” from radical writers Thomas Paine, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. As one reviewer explained, the author's intention is “the laudable one of bringing into contempt the ridiculous and disgusting tenets of modern philosophers, as they prevailed a few years ago, when their progress bid fair to overthrow, with the altar and the throne, the moral system of all civilized nations.” The reviewers thought that in 1805, Harral was late to the arena, the crisis was over and the foe vanquished.