Persuasions #12, 1990 Page 70
Sir Lewis de Bourgh STEPHEN DERRY Sir Lewis de Bourgh was the late husband of Lady Catherine in Pride
and Prejudice. No other character
in Jane Austen’s fiction bears the Christian name “Lewis,” and hitherto no
provenance has been suggested for it.
However, it would appear likely that Jane Austen borrowed the name from Mary
de Clifford (1792), a novel by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, in which the
founder of the heroine’s family is called Sir Lewis de Clifford. F.W. Bradbrook
has demonstrated that Mary de Clifford was a source for Pride and
Prejudice,1 but he overlooked this link. 1 See Jane Austen and her Predecessors
(Cambridge, 1966), 124-36. |