Eavesdropping on Jane Austen’s England explores the real England of Jane Austen’s lifetime. It was a troubled period, with disturbing changes in industry and agriculture and a constant dread of invasion and revolution. The comfortable, tranquil country of her fiction is a complete contrast to the England in which she actually lived. From forced marriages and the sale of wives in marketplaces to boys and girls working down mines or as chimney sweeps, this enthralling social history reveals how our ancestors worked, played and struggled to survive. Taking in the horror of ghosts and witches, bull baiting, highwaymen and the stench of corpses swinging on roadside gibbets, this book is a must-read for anyone wanting to discover the genuine story of Jane Austen’s England and the background to her novels.
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Reviews
A fund of information on the everyday practices, customs, habits and fashions of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. Roy and Lesley Adkins . . . provide us with fresh and fascinating insights . . . you should read this book
Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly evoke the ways in which wealth and poverty coexisted ... This excellent book reminds us that, in many ways, Georgian England was as remote and alien to a modern sensibility as the Roman Empire
A fascinating read, incredibly well researched ... what stands out for me is the style in which it is written: when I had finished reading it, I kept dipping back into it!
Scholarly but accessible . . . a must for anyone who wants a peek under Mr Darcy's wet shirt
the Adkinses recreate Georgian England with relish ... a lively and impressionistic guide to the age, enjoyable for those entirely new to the subject, but also for the better informed ... this history paints a teeming and colourful picture of Austen's generation. Much of its wit comes from the judicious selection of diarists
A marvellously entertaining catalogue of early 19th-century English life . . . deserves a place on any Austen aficionado's bookshelf . . . I challenge anyone to pick it up and not still be reading an hour later, delighted by such a vivid and entertaining portrait of an era
Jane Austen offers Georgian England seen through a glass darkly. In Eavesdropping, Roy and Lesley Adkins hold up that mirror, take a deep breath, and buff and polish until the image clears
This is an admirable work for general readers, building on an acquaintance with the novels to recreate the world in which Austen lived. It will keep anyone happy for several days ... and will bear being taken up and read again and again
This substantial and wide-ranging book sets out to show how people lived in England in Jane Austen's lifetime ... There is an impressive depth of information and detail ... a pleasure to dip into as well as to read through
An incisive flavour of Regency England in every hue emerges