Jane Austen at Home
A Biography
ISBN10: 1250799961
ISBN13: 9781250799968
Trade Paperback
400 Pages
$20.00
CA$27.00
Take a trip back to Jane Austen's world and the many places she lived as historian Lucy Worsley visits Austen's childhood home, her schools, her holiday accommodations, the houses—both grand and small—of the relations upon whom she was dependent, and the home she shared with her mother and sister towards the end of her life. In places like Steventon Parsonage, Godmersham Park, Chawton House and a small rented house in Winchester, Worsley discovers a Jane Austen very different from the one who famously lived a "life without incident."
Worsley examines the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons. She shows readers a passionate Jane Austen who fought for her freedom, a woman who had at least five marriage prospects, but—in the end—a woman who refused to settle for anything less than Mr. Darcy.
Illustrated with two sections of color plates, Lucy Worsley's Jane Austen at Home is a richly entertaining and illuminating new book about one of the world’s favorite novelists and one of the subjects she returned to over and over in her unforgettable novels: home.
Reviews
Praise for Jane Austen at Home
"Worsley offers us much that Austen's admirers wish to know . . . with humor and poignancy and common sense, just as Austen would have wished."—Amy Bloom, The New York Times Book Review
"A personal look inside the life of a singular woman . . . [the] intimate spaces in both this book and in Austen’s original works fly off the page in full-fledged color."—Madeleine Luckel, Vogue
"Jane Austen at Home offers a fascinating look at Jane Austen's world through the lens of the homes in which she lived and worked throughout her life. The result is a refreshingly unique perspective on Austen and her work and a beautifully nuanced exploration of gender, creativity, and domesticity."—Amanda Foreman, bestselling author of Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire
"Worsley writes with a historian's acumen and a Janeite's passion . . . This volume is sure to delight Austen fans."—Library Journal (starred review)
BOOK EXCERPTS
Read an Excerpt
1
To Steventon
‘The rector of a parish has much to do …his parish duties, and the careand improvement of his dwelling.’
Pride and Prejudice
TO GENERATIONS OF Austen worshippers, the site of Steventon...