In 'The Proliferation of Newspapers in Regency England', Cheryl Bolen has an interesting article about the British newspaper situation of 1816. Time-wise it is admittedly after the publication of Emma, but I still find the article applicable to this chapter on Jane Austen and her newspapers.

      Bolen reminds us that newspapers were heavily taxed at the time, and that ‘despite government censorship that included prosecution for libel, newspapers proliferated during the Regency.’ She adds that the newspapers at the time sold at the high price of seven pence and that it has been estimated ‘that because of the high cost, each newspaper passed through twenty pair of hands. They were also available at coffee houses and circulating libraries.’[i]

 

Bolen writes:

In 1816, there were thirty-one national newspapers, including fourteen in London. Daily papers included The Times, The Morning Chronicle, Morning Post and The Morning Herald.

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Out of these, the leading newspapers were John Walters’ Times, which catered to the Tories, James Perry’s Morning Chronicle, a vehicle for the Whigs, and The Morning Post, which was heavily supported by the Prince Regent. Each of these was a morning newspaper.

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Evening newspapers included The Sun, The Courier, The Globe, The Star, The Traveller, and The Statesman. Other daily papers were The British Press, The Public Ledger, and The Morning Advertiser.

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Newspapers published Monday-Wednesday-Friday included The London Chronicle, The London Packet, and The Evening Mail.

On Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday, the Commercial Journal, the St. James Chronicle, General Evening Post, and The English Chronicle appeared.

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Those periodicals published only on Mondays included the Farmers Journal, Country Chronicle The News, the Hunt Brothers’ Examiner, the National Register, and Bell’s Messenger.

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Saturday-only publications included Cobbett’s Political Register and Mirror of the Times while Baldwin’s Journal appeared only on Friday, as did the Country Herald.[ii]

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Some of these names are recognizable from the letters of Austen, such as the London evening paper ‘The Sun’ which ran from 1792-1806. The paper was funded by members of the Tory government to counter the contemporary pro-revolutionary press.[iii]

 

Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade writes that the ‘word newspaper occurs only five times in the letters and its shortened form paper six times.’ However, van Ostade adds that there are other indirect references to newspaper as for example in Letters 25 and 39.[iv] I have read through Jane Austen Letters and I have prepared a list of the references that I have located. In the headings DLF stands for Deirdre Le Faye’s Jane Austen’s Letters.

 

Letter 19, to Cassandra; Queen’s Square, Bath, Friday May 17th 1799 (DLF p. 42)

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‘There was a long list of Arrivals here, in the [Bath] Newspaper yesterday, so that we need not immediately dread absolute Solitude…’

 

Letter 25, to Cassandra; Steventon, November 8th 1800 (DLF p.59)

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‘Mr Holder’s paper tells us that sometime in last August, Capt: Austen & the Petterell were very active in securing a Turkish Ship […] You will see the account in the Sun I dare say.—'

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van Ostade writes that the ‘Holders were tenants of Ashe Park, while Ashe Rectory was the “home of the Lefroy family”,’ [v] so the newspapers might have been local to Basingstoke, Hampshire, and the Sun is a London paper.

 

Letter 31, to Cassandra; Steventon, 14th-16th January 1801 (DLF p.77)

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‘Have you seen that Major Byng, a nephew of Lord Torrington is dead? That must be Edmund.—'

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DLF has identified the newspaper to that of The Times of 13 January 1801 (DLF p.388) which is a London paper.

 

Letter 39, to Cassandra; Lyme 14th September 1804 (DLF p.99)

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‘We have the Pinckards Newspaper however, which I shall take care to lend him.’

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It is not known which type of newspaper this is, as Le Faye identifies the Pinckards as people who may have been staying in Lyme as well and who may possible be originating from London.[vi]

 

Letter 53, to Cassandra; 18th-21st June 1808 (DLF p.137)

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          ‘This is a sad story about Mrs Powlett. I should not have suspected her of such a thing.’

             

In Note 13, p.401, DLF has identified the newspaper to being The Morning Post, 18 and 21 June 1808, and DLF quotes the article: ‘Another elopement has taken place in high life. A Noble Viscount, Lord S., has gone off with a Mrs. P., the wife of a relative of a Noble Marquis [of Winchester].’ ‘Mrs. P’s faux pas with Lord S—e took place at an inn near Winchester.’

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The Morning Post was a conservative daily newspaper published in London from 1772 to 1937, when it was acquired by The Daily Telegraph.[vii]

 

Letter 60, to Cassandra; Castle Square, Southampton 24th-25th October 1808 (DLF p.157)

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‘On the subject of matrimony, I must notice a wedding in the Salisbury paper, which has amused me very much. Dr Phillot to Lady Frances St Lawrence. She wanted to have a husband I suppose, once in her life, and he a Lady Frances.’

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The Salisbury Journal is the local newspaper for the Salisbury area of England founded in 1729 but revived by William Collins in 1736.[viii] In the 19th century it was known as The Salisbury and Winchester Journal.

 

Letter 66, to Cassandra; Castle Square, Southampton 24th January 1809 (DLF p.178)

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‘The Portsmouth paper gave a melancholy history of a poor Mad Woman, escaped from Confinement, who said her Husband & Daughter of the Name of Payne lived at Ashford in Kent. Do You own them?’

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In Note 14, p.409, DLF has identified the ‘Portsmouth paper’ to being the ‘Hampshire Telegraph, 23 Jan. 1809.’

 

Letter 71, to Cassandra; Sloane St, London 25th April 1811 (DLF p.193)

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We have no engagements but for Sunday. Eliza’s cold makes quiet advisable.—Her party is mentioned in this morning’s paper.

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In Note 14, p.413, DLF has identified the article: ‘”On Tuesday, Mrs H. AUSTIN [sic] had a musical party at her house in Sloane-street” (Morning Post, 25 Apr.).’

 

Letter 74, to Cassandra; Chawton, 31st May 1811 (DLF p.200)

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          'How horrible it is to have so many people killed!—And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!’

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In Note 7, p.415, DLF has identified this to having been in The Hampshire Telegraph of Monday 27 May, which ‘reported a battle at Almeida a few days previously, with some casualties give; then on Monday 3 June carried a special supplement “London Gazette Extraordinary” with a full account of the battle, named “Albuera” by the Duke of Wellington.’

 

The Hampshire Telegraph was established on 14 October 1799 as Portsmouth Telegraph or Mottley's Naval and Military Journal. The newspaper has been through the following changes:

1799–1802 Portsmouth Telegraph; or, Mottley's Naval and Military Journal

1803–03 Hampshire Telegraph, & Portsmouth Gazette

1803–99 Hampshire Telegraph, and Sussex Chronicle

1900–14 Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle

1913–61 Hampshire Telegraph & Post and Naval Chronicle.

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‘The newspaper provided a chronicle of events for the busy naval port of Portsmouth throughout the century.’[ix]

 

Letter 79, to Cassandra; Chawton 29th January 1813 (DLF p.210)

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’The Advertisement is in our paper to day [sic] for the first time;’

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In Note 2, pp.419-20, DLF has the following remark:

‘There is no advertisement for the book in either the Hampshire Chronicle or the Hampshire Telegraph of 29 Jan. 1813, but it is mentioned in the Morning Chronicle of Thursday, 28 Jan., under the heading “Books Published This Day”; presumably the London papers would reach Chawton the following day.’

 

Letter 82, to Martha Lloyd; Chawton 16th February 1813 (DLF pp.216-17)

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‘I suppose all the World is sitting in Judgement upon the Princess of Wales’s Letter. Poor Woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman, & because I hate her Husband—but I can hardly forgive her for calling herself “attached & affectionate” to a Man whom she must detest—’

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In Note 6, p.422, DLF has the following remark: ‘The Princess of Wales had written to her estranged husband, stating her grievances, on 14 January 1813, and this letter was subsequently published in the Morning Chronicle of Monday 8 Feb. 1813; the Hampshire Telegraph reprinted it in its issue of Monday 15 Feb.’

 

Letter 86, to Francis Austen; Chawton 3rd July 1813 (DLF p.225)

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‘I wonder whether you happened to see Mr Blackall’s marriage in the Papers last Janry. We did. He was married at Clifton to a Miss Lewis, whose Father had been late of Antigua.’

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In Note 12, p.425, DLF records that Mr Blackall’s ‘marriage was reported in the Hampshire Telegraph of Monday 11 Jan. 1813.’

 

Letter 144, to Cassandra; Chawton 4th September 1816 (DLF p. 333)

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‘The Duchess of Orleans, the paper says, drinks at my Pump.

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In Note 5, p.460, DLF has the following remark: ‘The Morning Post, 3 Sept. 1816, reported that the Duke of Orleans had left London for Cheltenham.’

 

Besides these references to newspapers by Austen there is the following remark in Jane Austen at Home (p.81):

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'The case is bolstered because this particular edition of The Loiterer was the only one ever to be advertised in The Reading Mercury, a newspaper that was read in Steventon.’[x]

 

This claim is supported Paula Byrne in The Real Jane Austen (p. 67):

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‘It was initially aimed at an Oxford student audience, but James eventually managed to get wider distribution for it, engaging a London publisher called Thomas Egerton and also advertising in the Reading Mercury, the local paper that served Steventon and the rest of East Hampshire.[xi]

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I will thus focus on: 

The Bath Chronicle, the Bath Journal, the Bath Herald and Register, the Bath Herald, the Times, the Morning Post, the Hampshire Chronicle, the Morning Chronicle, the Oxford Mercury and Midland County Chronicle, the Reading Mercury and Oxford Gazette, and the Sussex Weekly Advertiser or Lewes Journal.

 

[i] Bolen, ‘The Proliferation of Newspapers in Regency England’.

[ii] Bolen.

[iii] Davis, ‘Heriot, John (1760–1833), Newspaper Editor and Writer’.

[iv] Tieken-Boon van Ostade, In Search of Jane Austen, para. 2.6.

[v] Tieken-Boon van Ostade, para. 2.6.

[vi] Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 28.

[vii] Hindle, The Morning Post, 1772-1937.

[viii] Ferdinand, BC and the Provincial Newspaper Trade, 33–35.

[ix] ‘Hampshire Telegraph in British Newspaper Archive’.

[x] Worsley, Jane Austen at Home, 81.

[xi] Byrne, The Real Jane Austen, 67.