Women Writing about Money: Women's Fiction in England, 1790–1820

by Edward Copeland

This study addresses a paradox in the lives of women in Jane Austen's time who had no legal access to money yet were held responsible for domestic expenditure. The book translates the fictional money of the novels of Jane Austen's day into the power of contemporary spendable incomes, and from the perspective of what the British pound could buy at the market, the economic lives of women in the novels emerge as part of a general picture of women's economic disability. Through the work of writers such as Austen and Edgeworth, as well as those of magazine fiction, the author examines the professional lives of women authors, their publishers, their profits, and the demands of their reading public. By linking authorship to the economic lives of contemporary women, Women Writing About Money links the fantasy worlds of women's fiction with the social and economic realities of both readers and writers.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

309 pages, Hardcover

First published February 24, 1995

Reviews

[Holey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first chapter is invaluable for understanding the economics in Austen-era literature - is 300 pounds/year enough for a couple to live on genteelly? How much income is required in order to keep a carriage? The rest of the book is interesting for a while, but devolves a bit into a rote academic format of observation-plus-supporting-quotes. It does offer a rather sobering glimpse at the difficulties of making a living by writing women's novels in the Regency era.

[Eleanor]

Thesis reading. I’m not sure how much of this I’ll be able to use, but there’s an extremely useful long-ish section at the beginning which lays out, in quite some detail, what various amounts of money per year in eighteenth-century novels actually represent, in terms of purchasing power, long-term stability, class position, etc. It’s very handy information, especially given how few of us could really confidently state the material difference between £300 and £3,000 a year in Austen’s time.