Thomas Langlois Lefroy
In 1796, Lefroy began a flirtation with English novelist Jane Austen, who was a friend of an older female relative. Jane Austen wrote two letters to her sister Cassandra mentioning "Tom Lefroy", and some have suggested that it may have been he whom Austen had in mind when she invented the character of Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice", as the courtship between Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen took place over the year or so that "Pride and Prejudice" was written. In his 2003 biography, "Becoming Jane Austen", Jon Spence suggests that Jane Austen actually used her and Tom LeFroy's personalities as the models for Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, but not in an expected way. Spence suggests that Jane Austen used Tom Lefroy's more gregarious personality as the model for the novel's heroine Elizabeth Bennet, and her own measured demeanor was used as the model for the male protagonist, Mr. Darcy. So while the exact influence of Tom Lefroy on "Pride and Prejudice" continues to be debated, it does seem certain that his presence in Austen's life is in some way reflected in the novel.
Mary Wollstonecraft
In contrast, there was one writer of the generation after Wollstonecraft who apparently did not share the judgmental views of her contemporaries. Jane Austen never mentioned the earlier woman by name, but several of her novels contain positive allusions to Wollstonecraft’s work. The American literary scholar Anne K. Mellor notes several examples. In "Pride and Prejudice", Mr Wickham seems to be based upon the sort of man Wollstonecraft claimed that standing armies produce, while the sarcastic remarks of protagonist Elizabeth Bennet about "female accomplishments" closely echo Wollstonecraft's condemnation of these activities. The balance a woman must strike between feelings and reason in "Sense and Sensibility" follows what Wollstonecraft recommended in her novel "Mary", while the moral equivalence Austen drew in "Mansfield Park" between slavery and the treatment of women in British society tracks one of Wollstonecraft's favorite arguments. In "Persuasion", Austen's characterization of Anne Eliot (as well as her late mother before her) as better qualified than her father to manage the family estate also echoes a Wollstonecraft thesis.