Jane Austen's England

Jane Austen's England

Roy Adkins, Lesley Adkins

Language: English

Pages: 448

ISBN: 0670785849

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


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 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. Drawing upon a rich array of contemporary sources, including many previously unpublished manuscripts, diaries, and personal letters, Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray the daily lives of ordinary people, discussing topics as diverse as birth,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.

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.

Perfect: A Novel

Dogma: A Novel

The Last Witchfinder: A Novel

The Duel in Early Modern England: Civility, Politeness and Honour (Ideas in Context)

Tales from the Mall

Conquering Knight, Captive Lady

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inhaled, a habit largely confined to the upper classes. Woodforde noted purchases of both tobacco and snuff, as in 1790: ‘at Mr. Carys shop for ½ lb. tobacco, pd. 0: 1: 4. At Ditto – for 2 oz: of Scotch snuff 0: 0: 2.’69 After giving away his snuff, Jones said of his wife: ‘O that my deary would give up snuff & novels!!’70 Woodforde also indulged in drinking a fair amount of alcohol and was particularly fond of card games and of gambling for moderate stakes with friends and family. He recorded.

Army to strip teeth and other valuables from the dead: They generally obtained the teeth on the night succeeding the battle, only drawing them from those soldiers whose youth and health rendered them peculiarly fitted for the purposes to which they were to be employed. Nothing but the large sums of money derived from the depradations could have prompted them to encounter the risk…for I do not believe a soldier in the whole army would have hesitated one moment to blow out the brains of a person.

88, 93, 99, 106, 116, 132, 135, 149, 153, 160, 171, 202, 216, 220, 234, 239, 247, 253–5, 281, 291, 311, 364, 368, 370, 380 inoculation 298–9; see also vaccination insanity xix, 278, 313; see also lunatics invasion threat xviii, 177, 200, 253, 263 Iremonger, Miss 136 Irish population 42, 85, 163, 201, 273 ironing 97, 134, 137, 139 jackets 56, 91, 94, 118, 121, 123, 263; see also coats Jenkin, William 61, 67, 174, 249, 379 Jenner, Edward 299 Jews 6, 42, 126, 163, 227, 358 Jones, Joseph.

Frames.’58 Blackner also described the Government’s frantic response: In consequence of these outrages being continued, a considerable military force was brought into the neighbourhood; two of the London police magistrates, with some other officers, came down with a view of assisting the civil power in discovering the ringleaders; a considerable sum of money was also placed at the disposal of a secret committee, for the purpose of obtaining private information; but…these deluded men [the.

Cry aloud for bread, while those nefarious robbers of the public, known by the names of Forestallers and Monopolizers – which, I fear, are but other words to cover a certain class of the ENGLISH FARMERS – are permitted to hoard up the stores, which the indulgent God of nature gives to supply the wants of all his creatures.70 In the later eighteenth century, with grain prices rising and rents for farmland soaring, particularly for enclosed land, it became economic for large landowners to pay to.

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