Episode 106: The Thing About Special Licenses
Mrs. Bennet would like to ensure that Lizzy's special day is the MOST special. And what better way to do that than by having Darcy and Lizzy marry by special license. This episode we cover the banns, common licenses, and special licenses, and we dig into whether Mrs. Bennet's wedding dreams are likely to come true.
Selected Sources:
Adkins, Roy, and Lesley Adkins. Jane Austen’s England. New York: Viking, 2013.
Bannet, Eve Tavor. “The Marriage Act of 1753: ‘A Most Cruel Law for the Fair Sex.’” Eighteenth-Century Studies 30, no. 3 (1997): 233–54.
Byrne, Sandie. Jane Austen’s Possessions and Dispossessions. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137406316.
Cross, F. L., and E. A. Livingstone, eds. “Banns of Marriage.” In The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press, January 1, 2009. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001/acref-9780192802903-e-637.
Francis, Keith A. “Canon Law Meets Unintended Consequences: The Church of England and the Clandestine Marriage Act of 1753.” Anglican and Episcopal History 72, no. 4 (2003): 451–87.
Muir, Rory. Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.
Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist; the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Touchstone, 2007.
Probert, Rebecca. Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Reassessment. Cambridge University Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511596599.
———. “The Impact of the Marriage Act of 1753: Was It Really ‘A Most Cruel Law for the Fair Sex’?” Eighteenth-Century Studies 38, no. 2 (2005): 247–62.
