Sophie’s Princess Library ~ Eighteenth-Century & Regency Classics ♡

Hello my sweet peonies, I hope you are all well and having a wondrous summertime so far. It is so wondrous to finally say that we can begin doing activities which we love again – I am very much looking forward to doing some exciting things this summer, including…

Nevertheless, although it will be lovely to have a break from my studies, over the summer holidays I need to start reading and researching for the dissertation which I complete in my Third year of University.

The first text I’ve been delving into over the summer for the first time is Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park which I purchased in a beautiful edition from Flame Tree Publishing. I have recently discovered this publishing house and I truly adore their gold-embossed classic editions. Each one features foiled pages which resemble freshly spun gold and they arrive in the dinkiest size! I also purchased one of their editions of Anne of Green Gables which is just as beautiful.

Mansfield Park follows the journey of Miss Fanny Price, one of Austen’s most over-looked heroines who undergoes many trials when she is removed from her family home and “transplanted” to live at Mansfield Park, a grand estate owned by Sir Thomas Bertram and his family. Fanny finds herself ceaselessly placed on the outside of life at Mansfield, although she is the cousin of the Bertram’s her education, social position and upbringing firmly place her at odds with their privilege and wealth. Within this piece, Austen explores significant issues of otherness, colonialism, social etiquette, the importance of land/ownership and the trials one faces when they are in search of their identity.

For quite a few years, I’ve been fascinated by Marie Antoinette and her life. Therefore, I couldn’t resist purchasing Antonia’s Fraser’s biography of the eponymous French monarch. Fraser goes in depth on all the details surrounding Antoinette’s beginnings as the innocent Austrian ingenue archduchess, taking on the role wife to the Dauphin of France, at the age of fourteen in 1770. Antoinette had so many constraints and expectations placed upon her at such a young age and in order to understand and appreciate the complexities of her character and reign, we ought to strip away the visions of excess, decadence and luxury which have been prescribed and embellished her name. We must remember that beyond the allure of Versailles, the beautiful balls, masquerades and elegant dresses and the distant, pastoral charms of the Tuilleries and the enchantment of the Petit Trianon, Marie Antoinette was first, a woman and a loving mother. As Fraser illuminates in her Epilogue: ““A scapegoat was in fact what Marie Antoinette became. Among other things, she would be blamed for the whole French Revolution, by those who optimistically looked to one “guilty” individual as a way of explaining the complex horrors of the past.”

I began reading Cecilia by Frances Burney through a recommendation from one of my professors at University. Knowing my love and admiration for Austen, she thought that I would enjoy Burney’s prose, and I was most delighted to discover that Austen’s works were greatly influenced by Burney!

Cecilia follows the journey of its title character, she is an heiress who possesses a considerably significant fortune but will only be able to maintain this fortune if she can find a husband who will consent to take her surname.

Originally published in 1782, the novel has been remarked as a love-story and a social satire. Much of the narrative is observational, reflective and focuses on the interiority of characters (a theme which Austen would claim in the Regency period), charting the daily existence of London in 1779-80, Burney examines the social etiquette, fashionable events and soirées of the period and how Cecilia maneveours her way within them, particularly when we reflect upon her sheltered upbringing in the country it is insightful to see her sense of reculsivity.

I hope you enjoyed this darlings and it can provide you with some inspiration for your summer reading lists!