I'm reading Deirdre Le Faye's excellent `Jane Austen's Letters', in which she provides an invaluable Biographical Index of the people mentioned in them. I am struck by the lack of famous names. Apart from Warren Hastings, there is hardly any name readily familiar these days. JA mentions a few people mildly famous these days (at least to the extent that Le Faye can say `For details of his career see DNB' [ie Dictionary of National Biography]), but these are usually mere comments about people whom JA may not have known at all except at second-hand, or seen at a function, like Sir Edward Pellew, the Marquis of Landsdowne, or the parents of Sir John Moore of Corunna.

The Biographical Index of the letters raises some false hopes: Mary Robinson turns out not to be the celebrated Perdita but a servant; and Mrs Baskerville is another servant, with no trace of An Enormous Hound.

Contrast this with biographies of other people of the period: all of them seem to know lots of other famous people. Just to take two examples I know well:

Mary `Perdita' Robinson twisted the arms of about six hundred people to subscribe a volume of her poems at a guinea a book, with many names now recognisable among them (and not all of them her former lovers), including Joshua Reynolds, John Burgoyne of Saratoga ill-fame, and the Duchess of Devonshire (incidentally, the only name that may be in common is Dr Moore, who I think was the aforesaid father of Sir John of Corunna). See the link below and scroll down a bit.

Another biography subject, Gouverneur Morris, who drafted the US Constitution and kept a diary of the French Revolution, knew Jefferson, Talleyrand, Washington, Boswell, John Paul Jones, Lafayette... He has a common link with JA because he shared a mistress at one time with Lord Wycombe who later became JA's Marquis of Landsdowne (I can't resist adding that snippet to Le Faye's wonderful scholarship).