Elizabeth Craven, Jane Austen and the Vernons
Jane Austen and Elizabeth Craven were contemporaries but it is not known whether they ever met. It remains an intriguing possibility as they had many acquaintances in common, and were often only one link apart in the social network of late Georgian England. There are many literary connections between them. Jane Austen certainly read some of Craven's books and was influenced by them. She was probably also aware of Craven by reputation... and the reputation was rather a racy one. Lady Susan is the title of one of Jane Austen's most accomplished pieces of juvenilia, a relatively short epistolary novel with a sophisticated, far-from-saintly anti-heroine, Lady Susan Vernon, who, in her private letters to her best friend, boasts of her skills in flirting, adultery and general scheming. It is thought that Austen later put some of these traits into the character of Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park and that her sister-in-law, Eliza de Feuillide, may have served as a mod...