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England in the Age of Austen
by Jeremy Black
Published by: Indiana University Press
356 Pages
- eBook
- 9780253051967
- Published: March 2021
$29.99
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Dedicated fans of Jane Austen's novels will delight in accompanying historian Jeremy Black through the drawing rooms, chapels, and battlefields of the time in which Austen lived and wrote. In this exceedingly readable and sweeping scan of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain, Black provides a historical context for a deeper appreciation of classic novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility. While Austen's novels bring to life complex characters living in intimate surroundings, England in the Age of Austen provides a fuller account of what the village, the church, and the family home would really have been like. In addition to seeing how Austen's own reading helped her craft complex characters like Emma, Black also explores how recurring figures in the novels, such as George III or Fanny Burney, provide a focus for a historical discussion of the fiction in which they appear. Jane Austen's world was the source of her works and the basis of her readership, and understanding that world gives fans new insights into the multifaceted narratives she created.
Preface
Abbreviations
1. The Rise of the Novel
2. Rural England: The Epicenter of Austen's World
3. Agriculture and Agricultural Change
4. Families, Women and Men
5. Faith and the Church
6. Culture, the Arts, and Enlightenment
7. London: The Capital of Empire
8. Bath: The Capital of Leisure
9. Transport and Industry
10. A State at War
11. The Romantic Landscape
12. Conclusions
Notes
Selected Further Reading
Index
Jeremy Black is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Exeter and a Senior Fellow both of Policy Exchange and of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of many books, including A Subject for Taste: Culture in Eighteenth-Century England; George III: America's Last King; England in the Age of Shakespeare; and Charting the Past: The Historical Worlds of Eighteenth-Century England. Black is a recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize from the Society for Military History.
"A superb evocation of England in the age of Jane Austen. This book combines a deep appreciation of Austen's work with an excellent knowledge of the England in which she lived and wrote. It is essential reading for the Austen enthusiast and for those who want to understand the times she graced."
~William Gibson, Oxford Brookes University
"Jeremy Black draws on decades of research for an engaging journey into the historical of Jane Austen's life and novels. With its discussion of religion, society, and her relationship with the environment, England in the Age of Austen recovers a world before the Victorians that that brings one of our greatest authors into clearer focus for enthusiasts and scholars alike."
~William Anthony Hay, Mississippi State University
"With his enviable command of primary sources, Jeremy Black skilfully interweaves Jane Austen's works and letters with their social, religious, economic, and topographical contexts. Packed with newly researched information, the book offers a highly, informative, and perceptive analysis of life and conditions in late-Georgian England and of the experiences of Jane Austen and her contemporaries. "
~Grayson Ditchfield, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
"During the past thirty years, the scholarly literature devoted to the "world" of Jane Austen has dramatically expanded our understanding of that world, reaching far beyond the confines of Regency Bath and rural Hampshire. The distinguished British historian Jeremy Black now brings to this discussion a comprehensive analysis of the political, economic, social, cultural, and religious structures that underpinned the Age of Austen. Black is especially astute at blending together the stories of Austen's characters, Austen's family members, and other figures within Regency England."
~Richard Wendorf, Director, American Museum & Gardens
"Once again, the master historian Jeremy Black has put the world in his debt. This brisk, decorous, and incisive history of England in the Age of Austen would have delighted its namesake as much as it will delight and instruct contemporary readers."
~Roger Kimball, Editor & Publisher, The New Criterion
"Jeremy Black's new book on England in the Age of Austen, just published by Indiana University Press (2021), will be a treat for anyone who loves Jane - and who does not? - as well as anyone who is interested in her contexts. Black situates Austen's work in its social, political, economic and religious cultures, showing how her youthful commitments to Jacobite politics evolved into a more mature appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Alert to the ironies of her own life and the lives of her characters, Austen wrote of the kind of world in which she wanted to live, balancing the disappointments of her own life and those of her characters with a dependency upon providence and an active commitment to preserve the best values of English society."
~Crawford Gribben, Queen's University Belfast, New Books Network
"An absolute 'must' for the legions of Jan Austen fans, England in the Age of Austen is an extraordinarily well written history, impressively detailed, and a seminal work of original scholarship."
~Midwest Book Review
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