ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

Portrait of a lady, said to be Lady Theophila Lucy nèe Berkeley, later Nelson.      Lady Theophila Berkeley, born in 1650, was the second daughter of George, 1st Earl of Berkeley. Her father managed to save the family fortunes, reduced to a critical state during the Civil War, by marrying Elizabeth Massingberd, daughter of the Treasurer of the East India Company. Theophila's younger sister was the notorious Lady Arabella Berkeley, who ran away with Lord Grey. While the two sisters were very different in most respects, both became notorious.     Theophila was passionate and strong-willed, one of her passions being for brilliant men. She might be said to resemble her great-great-niece Elizabeth Craven in one respect, in that she was an author, albeit of a very different kind.      In 1668, when she was eighteen, Theophila married the nineteen-year-old Sir Kingsmill Lucy (1649-1678). He had inherited the estate of Faccombe, in Hampshire on the border...

  In May 1820, only three years after Jane Austen died, an article appeared in The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register , a periodical edited by Thomas Campbell, ‎Samuel Carter Hall, and ‎Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton  ‎(author of The Last Days of Pompeii ). It was an extended appreciation and evaluation of the women writers of the time, and was entitled "On the Female Literature of the present age; No. 2. The Author of Glenarvon; the Miss Porters; Mrs. Inchbald; Madame Arblay; Miss Burney; Lady Morgan; Miss Austen; Mrs. Jackson; Miss Taylor; ..."     The critic gives high praise to many of Jane Austen's contemporaries. When he (assuming it is one if the three editors who is writing) comes to Jane Austen, he laments her early death, and praises her in terms that may surprise modern readers.  " ... We turn from the dazzling brilliancy of Lady Morgan's works to  repose on the soft green of Miss Austen's sweet and unambitious creations . Her " Sense ...