Archives reveal that the future King George IV had a taste for fiction, and bought Sense and Sensibility two days before it was first advertised in 1811

In an irony worthy of the great novelist herself, a PhD student has discovered that one of the first purchasers of Jane Austen’s debut novel Sense and Sensibility was the Prince Regent – a man the author despised.

Nicholas Foretek, a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania, was delving through Windsor Castle’s Royal Archives as part of his research into 18th-century printing and publications when he came across a bill of sale revealing that the future King George IV bought a copy of Sense and Sensibility for 15 shillings from his booksellers, Becket & Porter. The purchase was made on 28 October 1811 – two days before the first public advertisement for the novel appeared. Published anonymously, Sense and Sensibility was not an immediate hit, only selling through its first print run by summer 1813 after positive reviews.

“[This] is perhaps the earliest known transaction of any Austen novel,” said Foretek, announcing his discovery. He said Becket & Porter provided a large number of books for the prince’s “ruinously expensive” Carlton House, and would have been familiar with his client’s reading tastes. Foretek said other bills showed the prince had a taste for fiction, including “some whose literary quality has not withstood scrutiny as successfully, including the following listed on the same bill alongside Austen’s work: Monk’s Daughter, Capricious Mother, and Sicilian Mysteries.”

Described in a biography published shortly after his death as the royal who had contributed more “to the demoralisation of society than any prince recorded in the pages of history”, the prince regent was an extravagant figure and a well-known admirer of Austen’s writing. Her nephew’s 1869 A Memoir of Jane Austen reveals how the prince’s physician once told her that the royal was “a great admirer of her novels; that he read them often, and kept a set in every one of his residences”. Austen was also informed that if she “had any other novel forthcoming she was at liberty to dedicate it to the prince”.

The admiration was not reciprocated: Austen wrote in 1813 that she took the side of the prince’s wife, Princess Caroline of Brunswick, after her infidelities became public: “Poor woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a Woman, & because I hate her Husband.” Her dedication to the prince in her 1815 novel Emma is famously unenthusiastic: “To his Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, this work is, by His Royal Highness’s Permission, most Respectfully Dedicated by his Royal Highness’s Dutiful and Obedient Humble Servant.”

Austen also had to deal tactfully with the prince’s librarian, the Reverend James Stainer Clarke, who made repeated suggestions for new directions for her novels. These included his idea that she “delineate in some future work the habits of life, and character, and enthusiasm of a clergyman, who should pass his time between the metropolis and the country”, or otherwise that “an historical romance illustrative of the august House of Cobourg would just now be very interesting”.

“It is amusing to see with what grave civility she declined a proposal that must have struck her as ludicrous,” writes Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh. She replied that such a story “might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But … no, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”

The prince regent, who became king in 1820, would go on to purchase two copies of Pride and Prejudice in 1813, alongside a second copy of Sense and Sensibility, as well as Mansfield Park in 1814. He also owned a gift copy of Emma – complete with clunky dedication from the author – and Northanger Abbey.

“How much the rakish prince took from the novels, and whether his inspiration tended towards the secret marriage contracts of a Mr Frank Churchill or the more mature deliberations of George Knightley remains very much an open question,” said Foretek, whose research is part of the Georgian Papers Programme, an international partnership intended to digitise and preserve thousands of items in the Royal Archives and Royal Library.

“This is a terrific discovery,” said Sarah Glosson, director of the arts and sciences graduate centre at of William and Mary university, a partner in the programme. “A gem of information like this – safely the first documented purchase of one of her novels – helps us better piece together the landscape in which Austen’s popularity took root.”