'This is â€¦ a lively and impressionistic guide to the age, enjoyable for those entirely new to the subject, but also for the better informed, who will not only discover new facts in its wealth of material, but appreciate the immediacy and flavour of its eye-witness accounts.' ~Rosemary Goring, Sunday Herald 'In reconstructing the lives of ordinary people in Georgian England, Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly evoke the ways in which wealth and poverty coexisted â€¦ This excellent book reminds us that Georgian England was as remote and alien to a modern sensibility as the Roman Empire.' ~Nick Rennison, Sunday Times 'A comprehensive survey of daily life in the time of Jane Austen, full of nuggets of surprising information. 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.' Drawing upon a rich array of contemporary sources, including many previously unpublished manuscripts, diaries, and personal letters, Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray the daily lives of ordinary people, discussing topics as diverse as birth,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. '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. A cultural snapshot of everyday life in the world of Jane Austen 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 by Roy A. Adkins