Jane Austen's England : Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods

An authoritative account of everyday life in Regency England, the backdrop of Austen’s beloved novels, from the authors of the forthcoming Gibraltar: The Greatest Siege in British History (March 2018) Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, wrote brilliantly about the gentry and aristocracy of two centuries ago in her accounts of young women looking for love. Jane Austen’s England explores the customs and culture of the real England of her everyday existence depicted in her classic novels as well as those by Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Drawing upon a rich array of contemporary sources, including many previously unpublished manuscripts, diaries, and personal letters, Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray the daily lives of ordinary people, discussing topics as diverse as birth, marriage, religion, sexual practices, hygiene, highwaymen, and superstitions. From chores like fetching water to healing with medicinal leeches, from selling wives in the marketplace to buying smuggled gin, from the hardships faced by young boys and girls in the mines to the familiar sight of corpses swinging on gibbets, Jane Austen’s England offers an authoritative and gripping account that is sometimes humorous, often shocking, but always entertaining. An authoritative account of everyday life in Regency England, the backdrop of Austens beloved novels,#160; from the authors of the forthcoming#160; Gibraltar:#160;The Greatest Siege in British History #160;(March 2018) Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, wrote brilliantly about the gentry and aristocracy of two centuries ago in her accounts of young women looking for love. Jane Austens England explores the customs and culture of the real England of her everyday existence depicted in her classic novels as well as those by Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Drawing upon a rich array of contemporary sources, including many previously unpublished manuscripts, diaries, and personal letters, Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray the daily lives of ordinary people, discussing topics as diverse as birth, marriage,#160; religion, sexual practices, hygiene, highwaymen, and superstitions. From chores like fetching water to healing with#160; medicinal leeches, from selling wives in the marketplace to buying smuggled gin, from the hardships faced by young boys and girls in the mines to the familiar sight of corpses swinging on gibbets, Jane Austens England offers an authoritative and gripping account that is sometimes humorous, often shocking, but always entertaining Nearly two centuries after her death, Jane Austen remains the most beloved of novelists in the English language, incomparable in the wit, warmth and insight with which she chronicles the wayward hearts of her unforgettable characters. Her work also offers a vivid depiction of rural life in late Georgian and Regency England, its country balls and ivy-covered vicarages, its social hierarchies and its anxieties about property and income. Yet the milieu Austen depicted is only one aspect of her era. For 29 of her 41 years the country was embroiled in war. Dramatic changes in industry and agriculture were transforming the country's physical and social landscape. This book offers a new view of her world in a wide-ranging and detailed social history of English life in the early nineteenth century, from weddings to childbearing, from education to fashion, from labor to leisure and finally to the rituals of death.--From publisher description