How celebrity name--dropping leads to another model for Pemberley

When, in 1751, the heir to these princely estates, Charles Watson, succeeded his father as the second Marquess of Rockingham, he became one of the wealthiest peers in England, with an annual income at well over ¿£20,000.® Charles Watson Wentworth, having added his mother's maiden name to his own, was twice elected Prime Minister of England but died unexpectedly in 1782. Because he died childless, the combined fortunes of the Watsons, the Wentworths, and the Woodhouses, all devolved on his next of kin, the Fitzwilliams. The real-world Collins, the original compiler of this mammoth reference work, was tireless/tiresome in his devotion to the filigreed detailing of the peerage. [...]the name of Austen's obsequious Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice is a straightforward allusion to a bestselling reference book, which had recently been re-edited by a member of the Austen circle (Brydges's latest nine-volume edition had appeared in 1812). Oxford (with its university, attended by the Austen boys), Blenheim (home to the Duke of Marlborough), Warwick (with its famous castle), Kenilworth (another castle), and Birmingham (a booming industrial town of which Austen evidently approved since, with the ironic logic of a double negative, she allows the unlikeable Mrs. Elton to snub it in Emma)}1 The characters of Pride and Prejudice proceed steadily northward via these real places.12 While a modern reader may reach for an atlas or GoogleMaps, geographical knowledge is, in the novels of Austen, often a test of character. (24 May 1813) Although we do not know whose celebrity portrait, "in Yellow," Austen had been hoping to spot, this letter strongly suggests that she had a particular real-world referent in mind for Elizabeth Bennet, too.17 Prompted by a curiosity to see "what Jane saw" and supported by Liberal Arts Instructional Technologies at the University of Texas at Austin, I recently led a team that reconstructed this Reynolds exhibit as a room-by-room virtual gallery.