ABSTRACT
In this essay, Devoney Looser examines previous claims about Austen’s and her family’s political affiliations and beliefs in order to deepen understanding of her legacy. The essay examines how categorizing Austen’s politics took shape, solidified, and shifted in the Victorian era, by turning to her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh’s descriptions of his aunt’s party affiliation in A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870). His descriptions of her in the messy context of mid-century political labels, it is argued, may give us greater insight into his own political positions than into hers, providing the groundwork for a long-running tradition of ‘political mirroring’ where Austen is concerned.
