Adoption, Narrative, and Nation, 1800–1850: The Case of William Austin
2014; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 53; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/jbr.2014.114
ISSN1545-6986
Autores Tópico(s)Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
ResumoAbstract William Austin (1802–1857), the child of Deptford laborers, was adopted de facto as an infant by Princess Caroline, the estranged wife of the Prince of Wales. She rendered the child's identity such a mystery that it prompted the Delicate Investigation in 1806, a quasi-judicial affair published in 1813 in the vexed volume known as The Book . “Prince Austin” was regularly on stage during Caroline's carnivalesque rambles on the Continent from 1814 to 1820, frequently attacked in the loyalist press as “that bastard Billy Austin.” In the uproar of the Queen Caroline affair in 1820, Austin remained a target of loyalist scorn. Because Queen Caroline named him her residuary legatee at her death in 1821, his name registered aftershocks of queenite disruption through the middle of the century. In these narrative contests about Austin's identity, the metonymic traffic between a provisional family form and an absolutist national model bobbed and weaved in a disorderly fashion on the conspicuous stage of a dysfunctional royal family. On this prominent platform, adoptive contingency intermittently confounded closed absolutism.
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