Fact from Fiction
What the Great 19th Century Novels Can Tell Us about Our Ancestors
CLS Talk by Dave Annal 2nd April 2025
This was a brisk and elegant little talk, full of excellently chosen extracts, mainly from the works of Jane Austen, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Wilkie Collins, with fleeting allusions to novels by R. D. Blackmore and H. G. Wells.
Dave Annal is primarily a family historian, but this was also a much broader exercise in social history.
Themes of inheritance and illegitimacy are common in such works of fiction, as are the huge social contrasts of the time: grand stately homes on the one hand and urban slums on the other.
The absolute necessity of baptism after birth was stressed: without it you couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground. A key scene in Tess of the d’Urbervilles was cited, since it revolves around this topic.
Education and literacy are another of the themes explored. The important role played by Dame Schools on the one hand and home tutoring on the other was mentioned.
Work, too, is frequently referred to: rural work in Hardy, urban work in Dickens.
Marriage as an imperfect but central institution drives the mechanism of many a Victorian plot.
The importance of research in Country Records and Parish Registers often crops up.
So does the theme of travel and transport: private travel in a chaise and four for rich folk, the coach and later the railway for those of middle income, and Shank’s pony for the poor.
We’re grateful to Dave for enlightening us on such a wide range of issues.
Kevin Maynard