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. 

       My article about Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius is now live at the History Reclaimed website. It's an honour to have my contribution to the debate about the BBC shared at a site founded by so many eminent historians and academics. Below is additional material that I did not include in my article for reasons of length. 
  In an earlier post, I  decried a BBC documentary on Shakespeare that astonished me for the amount of misinformation it conveyed. Now it's time to clutch my pearls over the same treatment meted out to Jane Austen.  ​I didn’t see this documentary when it aired in the UK in May, but I recently found it on an online streaming service
     If you are in need of another eye-opening lecture on slavery, colonialism, empire, class prejudice and economic injustice, set to a soundtrack of driving violins, this is the program you've been looking for. If, however, you assumed a program called "Rise of a Genius" would offer an explication of Austen’s wit and her unique talents, you will be disappointed. You can get a sample of the mood of this program by viewing this preview here. 
   The BBC has given us many shows on Jane Austen over the years, on both radio and television, and if you stack these older programs up against this one, you will see  how respect for serious scholarship has been replaced with—whatever this is. If this is the best that the BBC could muster for Austen’s 250th birthday, then the BBC is a hollowed-out shell, a travesty of a mockery of a sham...

    Rebecca is one of 20 novels that may—or may not—have been written by the author of the 1809 novel The Woman of Colour, a book which has attracted a lot of academic interest in recent years. I’ve been entertaining myself by reading these novels to see if I can find similarities to The Woman of Colour.
   Rebecca, published in 1799, is one of the earliest in this chain of novels which stretches from 1795, with the historical novel The Duke of Clarence, to 1817 and The Revealer of Secrets. One similarity worth noting is that the father of Olivia Fairfield in The Woman of Colour, and the father of Rebecca Elton in this novel, both tell their daughters who they should marry in their last will and testament.
    I have a lot to say about Rebecca, even though it is a minor, third-rate novel. It earned only a brief literary snort from the London Review, which quoted a bit of dialogue: “Ah, Rebecca! How shall I part with you?” to which the reviewer answered: “Without a sigh!”
   Yes, the dialogue is often clichéd (and exceedingly florid to our modern tastes) and the narration is stilted. In that respect, we can contrast this authoress with Jane Austen. We can compare the themes and tropes of other novels of this era, and at some point, I’ll come back to it to discuss more similarities to The Woman of Colour, but not quite yet...

​Disclaimer: When I quote opinions from this two hundred-year-old book, I am not endorsing them. 
    In an early post on this blog, I referenced Matilda, or, the Barbadoes Girl (1816) by the prolific author Barbara Hofland as an example of a book which openly discussed enslavement, plantations, and the slave trade. I was countering the argument that Jane Austen had to pull her punches when discussing slavery. Hofland's pro-abolition opinions, stated openly by the "good" characters in the book, were not controversial at the time, even in a book written for children.
    The abolitionist message of this book reflects the reality that evangelical Christians were the driving force behind the anti-slavery crusade in England. That said, the moral issue of slavery and the welfare of enslaved persons is subordinate to the personal reformation of the main character, a spoiled daughter of a planter who repents of her bad temper and selfish behavior after she is taken into a loving Christian household. In addition, the topic of slavery is left behind in favour of a different moral danger in the last chapters of the book.
       Matilda, or, The Barbadoes Girl was reprinted for over fifty years, which is pretty good innings for an author. In most editions, the title is simply The Barbadoes Girl. I have not found any contemporary reviews. One American journal praised Mrs. Hofland’s “interesting little stories which are not less marked with tenderness than with morality” but the reviewer admitted he had not had time to read The Barbadoes Girl. Here is a synopsis...