[LMB] Age at first marriage

[Margaret Dean]

Paula Lieberman wrote:
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dorian E. Gray" <israfel at eircom.net>
> 
> > Pete said...
> >>
> >> 200 years ago, Jane Austen seems not to have believed that wide
> >> differences in age were all that bad, at all.  In _Sense and
> >> Sensibility_,
> >> Marianne is 17 and Col. brandon is 35 when they meet, and they marry when
> >> she is 19 (and he must, thereby, be 37?).
> >
> > True, and this kind of age difference is preserved in many of Georgette
> > Heyer's romances.  I think the biggest age gap is between Avon and Leonie
> > (20 years), but frequently the heroes are in their early 30s while the
> > heroines are 20-ish.  Off-hand, I can't think of a main-characters couple
> > who are around the same age in her books, though often the minor-character
> 
> Not The Foundling--I don't think... the novel I'm trying to remember the
> name of, there's a young Duke who at the start of the story, gets told by
> his uncle that it time that he made an official offer for the young woman
> that there was an ex-officio betrothal made for between him and her when
> they were both babies.

That is The Foundling, yes.
 
> The largest age differences are in The Convenient Marriage, These Old
> Shades. and one or two others.   Many of the heroines are under 20 -- the
> one in The Convenient Marriage, the one in the story where the male lead
> proposes to someone and getting blown off, announces he is going to marry
> the first woman he sees, maybe cotillion....

No, that's Friday's Child -- though in that case, the hero is
fairly young too, early twenties or thereabouts (whereas the
heroine is maybe 16).

> several books involve women who
> are or are close to being on the shelf, and in their mid-twenties --
> Venetia, The Quiet Gentleman, perhaps The Toll Gate,  Regency Buck is headed
> there

Wellll... Judith's only 21.

> and so is Devil's Cub, there's the Lady Serena in I-forget-which book
> whose stepmother is younger than she is,

Bath Tangle.

> not sure of how old Frederica
> is....

Twenty-four, IIRC ... and thinks herself past marrying age, ha! 
:)
 

--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>