Jane Austen's Regency Dashwoods

By choosing Dashwood as Sense and Sensibilitys central family name, Jane Austen drew on the high-profile real Dashwoods, including their West Wycombe Hell-Fire Club notoriety. The 4th Baronets time at his Bourton-on-the-Hill hunting lodge spanned Janes adult life, with Warren Hastings (British-Indias first Governor-General) at Daylesford, and her close relatives at Adlestrop, nearby. This tightly-grouped Cotswold social network included the East India Company Cockerell family, whose extraordinary Mughal-style house and gardens at Sezincote involved the glittering design trio of Samuel Pepys Cockerell, Humphry Repton, and Thomas Daniell. The latters picturesque journeys in India and earlier Dashwood commission at West Wycombe pull together complex narrative threads.