Dimensions
159 x 238 x 38mm
Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, lived from 1775 to 1817. Her fiction focuses on the gentry and aristocracy, and her heroines are young women looking for love. Yet the comfortable, tranquil country that she brilliantly devised is a complete contrast to the England in which she actually lived. For twenty-nine of Jane Austen's forty-one years, the country was embroiled in war. These were troubled times, with disturbing changes in industry and agriculture and a constant dread of invasion. The loss of America was followed by terrifying revolution in neighbouring France, provoking fears that the sporadic unrest and rioting in England might lead to wholesale insurrection and the overthrow of the ruling classes. EAVESDROPPING ON JANE ASUTEN'S ENGLAND explores the real England of that time. Drawing on a rich array of contemporary sources, including diaries, personal letters, newspapers and trial proceedings, Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray fascinating aspects of the daily lives of ordinary people. From forced marriages and the sale of wives in marketplaces to boys and girls working down mines or as chimney sweeps, this book eavesdrops on the daily chore of fetching water, the horror of ghosts and witches, Saint Monday, bull baiting, sedan chairs, highwaymen, the stench of corpses swinging on roadside gibbets and the horrors of surgery without anaesthetics.
