Jane Austen's England

In this original and perceptive study Maggie Lane reveals the importance of place in Jane Austen's novels and follows the writer's travels throughout Georgian England. Far from being confined to her native Hampshire and Bath, as is often thought, Jane Austen travelled in fourteen counties, knew three cities intimately and explored many stretches of the English coastline. Brighton and Bristol, Lyme Regis and London, Portsmouth and Southampton, Oxford and Canterbury - these and several other towns provided the stimulus for the acute, witty studies of society which fill Jane Austen's novels, from "Pride and Prejudice" to "Persuasion". At a time when England was particularly beautiful, following enclosure and the spread of Georgian architecture, Jane Austen also recorded faithful, revealing images of the countryside, inspired by the preoccupation, universal among the English gentry, with the landscape, 'improvements' and 'picturesque' beauty. Travelling with Jane Austen county by county, this book examines her response both to what she saw and to what she read, and how this manifests itself in her writings. Maggie Lane's incisive text, elegantly illustrated with numerous contemporary engravings, superbly recreates the distinctive backdrop for some of the finest novels in English literature.