Two Histories of England, by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens

It is a truth universally acknowledged that history written by children is vastly more enjoyable (and a good deal more insightful) than history written for children.  This book provides one of each, from two of the most distinguished novelists of English literature of all time, and also demonstrates that history written by novelists is often more enjoyable than that written by historians who take themselves much more seriously.  As such, this particular book, in combining two relatively obscure works by two very famous authors, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, is a fascinating contrast in approaches.

The better of the two histories, both in its cynical wit and detached, ironic tone, as well as in its devastating satire of the biases of historians and the low value placed on women and their intellectual capacity to understand the truth of history, is Jane Austen’s “The History of England from the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st By a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian,” one of the funniest spoofs of English history of all time.  The book is not quite up to the satirical heights that Jane Austen would reach later in her career, but it is at least a sign that the cynical and clever Austen had a touch for razor-sharp wit that was noticeable even as a teenager mocking the histories of her time.  As a somewhat kindred spirit to her own, having turned my own hand to dryly witty alternative histories [1], I found her writing to be a breath of fresh air, and a worthy work in her oeuvre, worthy of a wider audience especially among those forced to read tedious histories filled with meaningless dates and names without any kind of narrative context.

The vast majority of this book, though, is taken up by the more solemn and serious writing of Charles Dickens, which is itself something of a mixed bag.  It is, to be sure, a good deal more of a history than the satirical sketch of Jane Austen, but as a history it comes close to caricature in its use of all caps to describe the dramatis personae of his account.  Additionally, there is a very severe irony in Dickens’ approach to the History of England, which he wrote as an adult, after he had found success as a novelist, for his children, calling it a “Child’s History of England.”  For one, the book is itself a sternly Victorian and moralistic account, filled with sturdy middle-class values and the judgment of historical figures by the standards of his day and age, which included a good deal of jingoistic English patriotism.  On the other hand, the book is itself very hostile to elites unsympathetic to the common man, including the vast majority of England’s ruling monarchs to that time, an approach that I am sympathetic too.  As a further irony, Dickens’ work was a sympathetic response to the “official histories” of his day that quickly became an official narrative of England’s history, until the aftermath of World War II drove England to bid farewell to the trumpets [2].

Each of the histories has major strong points.  Charles Dickens gets higher marks for ambitions as a historian and for his more egalitarian social views, of which I am in strong personal sympathies.  Jane Austen gets higher marks for her witty sarcasm and for her meta-historical awareness of the biases inherent in the historical textbooks she clearly had little patience for.  The result is that both histories are of value to read for the reader interested in the approaches of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens as writers.  Historians are fortunate to have two such excellent novelists in their camp, to join the list of novelists whose impact on history has been notable and beneficial (a list that includes the noted Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote).

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/the-presidents-of-the-confederate-states-of-america-an-alternate-history/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/a-musing-on-official-historical-narratives-and-agendas/