A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes
though he suppresses the reference in Ed.2 and later editions. See
p. 133 below.
14 in 1771 . . . not then in strong health: the move to Steventon took place in
1768 (see note to p. 11 above.) Most likely Mrs Austen was again pregnant.
If so, the baby miscarried. The Austens first three children, all sons, were
born in three successive years, 1765–7; so a further pregnancy in 1768 is
not unlikely. On the other hand, 1771, though not the year the family
moved to Steventon, did see the birth of their fourth child, Henry. JEAL
could be confusing and compressing these events.
Ignorance and coarseness . . . ‘ . . . telling the story’: in Fam. Rec., 14, the
ignorant squire is named as John Harwood (1719–87) of Deane House,
and is further described as the reputed original of Squire Western in
Fielding’s novel Tom Jones (1749). But the real point of this and other
similar family anecdotes is to stress the intellectual superiority of the
Austens over their immediate neighbours, though their social standing
was more uncertain.
15 ‘the toe of the peasant . . . courtier’: Shakespeare, Hamlet, V. i. 136–7.
‘the handsome Proctor’: George Austen was ‘Junior Proctor for the academic
year 1759–60’ (Fam. Rec., 4). Proctors are annual appointments
from the academic community at Oxford and Cambridge, chosen to
enforce university regulations.
16 a periodical paper called ‘The Loiterer’: a humorous weekly paper jointly
founded and largely written by James and Henry Austen, with help from
undergraduate friends. Like their father, both James and Henry were
students at St John’s College, Oxford, though their association with the
college was as ‘Founder’s kin’, through their mother Cassandra Leigh
Austen. The paper ran for sixty issues, from 31 January 1789 to 20 March
1790, when James left Oxford, and was issued commercially, though its
circulation was small, through booksellers in Oxford, Birmingham, Bath,
Reading, and London. Its model was Joseph Addison and Richard
Steele’s Spectator, whose first series ran daily from March 1711 to
December 1712. But later examples of its enduring format–– a continuing,
partly simulated and partly genuine interaction between readers and
writers, a kind of conversation in print–– can be found in the two popular
periodicals conducted by Henry Mackenzie, The Mirror (1779–80) and
The Lounger (1785–7). A more immediate precedent, and one nearer
to home, was the forty-eight numbers of the Olla Podrida, edited by
Thomas Monro of Magdalen College, Oxford, and published in book
form in 1788. The Olla Podrida is mentioned in issue 9 of The Loiterer as
among ‘the entertaining papers of our most celebrated periodical
writers’; and it is among several college and schoolboy journals appearing
in the late 1780s and early 1790s. It has been suggested that The Loiterer
may contain JA’s first published piece, a letter to the editor signed by
‘Sophia Sentiment’, in issue 9 (28 March 1789), in which the writer
complains of the absence of stories to interest women, ‘about love and