Our 'Rational Creatures' shoot is guest-directed by the most notable Almack’s patronesses. These ladies provided the vouchers granting access to London's hottest club in the late 1700s. Here they select intriguing subjects from the years around the publication of Pride and Prejudice. For insights into the Almack’s patronesses active during Austen’s time, see the link below.

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The Rational Creatures shoot takes inspiration from Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion, chapter eight, where Anne Elliot states, “But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman and as if women were all fine ladies instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” Anne’s phrase "rational creatures" underlines the ideal of reason guiding human behaviour, possibly inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft’s earlier work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).

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The Rational Creatures selected by the patronesses are Countess Craven, Lady Caroline Lamb, the Dubouchet Sisters, Sarah Sophia Child Villiers, the Porter Sisters, Giuseppina Grassini, Angelica Catalani, the Copeigne Sisters, Sarah Siddons, and the nineteenth-century Almack’s patronesses: Lady Sarah Jersey, Countess Cowper, and Princess Esterházy—all central to the Regency world Austen inhabited.

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The witches’ image directly references Daniel Gardner’s painting, Macbeth’s Witches, featuring patronesses Elizabeth, Anne, and Georgiana.