England in the Age of Austen

by Jeremy Black

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Research

355 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 2, 2021

About the author

Jeremy Black is an English historian, who was formerly a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.
Black is the author of over 180 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described by one commentator as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". He has published on military and political history, including Warfare in the Western World, 1882–1975 (2001) and The World in the Twentieth Century (2002).

Reviews

[Allegria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeremy Black with more than 100 books to his credit is well placed as an eminent historian to paint a picture of Jane Austen within her own time-frame and surroundings. I found the book enjoyable, absorbing and enlightening of Austen's background and personality, together with her reactions to circumstances in England, reflected in her writing.

[Misa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the information in this book were really irrelevent to me. It was mainly a history book of late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain. I've read "A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England" by Sue Wilkes and it was way more entertaining for me than this book. Honestly, I neither need nor I'm interested in all those historical details about that period of time.

[Sirena · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 *

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5