ABSTRACT
The idea that sympathy for the Stuarts, England's lost dynasty, can be gleaned in Jane Austen's oeuvre is the subject of some scholarly contention. Most references to Austen's engagement with Stuart history begin and end with her parodic History of England, written in 1791, when she was a “precocious” 15-year-old. The satirical nature of this text certainly accommodates multiple readings, which have largely been informed by the “family biographies” written by Austen's Austen (male) kin. It was, however, Austen's maternal relatives, the Leighs of Warwickshire, who engaged with Stuart's history and created Jacobite narratives of loss, dispossession, and occasionally restitution, in various works of family history. All that we know of Austen's “Stuart connections” have been formed by the historical writings of Austen's female Leigh kin, although this is rarely acknowledged by her modern biographers, an oversight that functions as another form of loss. This chapter reads Austen's History of England as part of this Leigh family history tradition and as part of a shared narrative of loss.
