Maggie Lane

Looks at the life and writings of Jane Austen, and describes what life was like during the times in which she lived.

The Life and Times of England's Most Popular Author

Jane Austen's World

On the Sofa with Jane Austen is a collection of essays that first appeared in the Regency World magazine. They celebrate the quirkiest corners and cleverest contrivances of Jane Austen's art. The twenty-one topics range from coiffure to crime, from gossip to grandmothers. The title comes from the first essay, but it is also an invitation to spend time with a well-loved author in a relaxed and intimate way. The essays are: On the Sofa; The Hair was Curled; Lady Bertram's Fringe; A Very White World; The Silence of Mr Perry; Plump Cheeks and Thick Ankles; Reading Aloud; Arms and Legs Enough; November in the Novels; Words Overheard; Home Comforts; Shoelaces and Shawls; The Freshest Green; Neighbourhood Spies; She is Pretty Enough; Small World; Devoted Sisters; Theft and Punishment; Heroes and Husbands; Only a Grandmother and finally, Dear Mary. This will be of interest to all Jane Austen enthusiasts, especially undergraduates and those studying English Literature at A-level, as well as History and Economics.

On the Sofa with Jane Austen

Jane Austen's England

Bath in the Life and Times of Jane Austen

A Charming Place

[The author] "turns her attention to the fascinating nuances of Austen's language, and the way it embodies her most profound beliefs about human conduct and character. This book enhances understanding of Austen's moral values through the discussion of key words, investigates changes of meaning, and explains words which may confuse modern readers ... No other author uses abstract nouns as extensively as Jane Austen. Three of her six novels even draw on such words for their titles: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion. Terms like "elegance," "gentility," and "propriety" seem to define her well-ordered, judgemental world. In making the fine moral, psychological, and social discriminations on which her plots depend, Jane Austen draws on the vocabulary of her age, which is both more abstract and more fixed than that of today. But as this study shows, she was capable of subtlety and even ambiguity in her deployment of such key concepts"--Publisher description.

Key Concepts in the Six Novels

Understanding Austen

What was the significance of the pyramid of fruit which confronted Elizabeth Bennet at Pemberley? Or of the cold beef eaten by Willoughby on his journey of repentance to see Marianne? Why is it so appropriate that the scene of Emma's disgrace should be a picnic, and how do the different styles of housekeeping in Mansfield Park engage with the social issues of the day? While Jane Austen does not luxuriate in cataloguing meals in the way of Victorian novelists, food in fact plays a vital part in her novels. Her plots, being domestic, are deeply imbued with the rituals of giving and sharing meals. The attitudes of her characters to eating, to housekeeping and to hospitality are important indicators of their moral worth. In a practice both economical and poetic, Jane Austen sometimes uses specific foodstuffs to symbolise certain qualities at heightened moments in the text. This culminates in the artistic triumph of Emma, in which repeated references to food not only contribute to the solidity of her imagined world, but provide an extended metaphor for the interdependence of a community. In this original, lively and well-researched book, Maggie Lane not only offers a fresh perspective on the novels, but illuminates a fascinating period of food history, as England stood on the brink of urbanisation, middle-class luxury, and change in the role of women. Ranging over topics from greed and gender to mealtimes and manners, and drawing on the novels, letters and Austen family papers, she also discusses Jane Austen's own ambivalent attitude to the provision and enjoyment of food.

Jane Austen and Food

Hazel Jones

Celebrating Pride and Prejudice

In this book, Maggie Lane reveals the importance of place in Jane Austen's writings and follows her travels throughout Georgian England. Jane Austen strayed far from the confines of her native Hampshire and Bath to find new material for her novels from "Pride and Prejudice" to "Northanger Abbey". With an accurate eye she sketched acute, witty studies of society in Lyme Regis and Bristol, Devizes and Southampton, Brighton and Winchester. This illustrated text summons the beauties of the English landscape, recreating the distinctive backdrop for some of the finest novels in English literature.

While Austen does not luxuriate in cataloguing meals in the way of Victorian novelists, food in fact plays a vital part in her novels. Her plots are deeply imbued with the rituals of giving & sharing meals. In this book, Maggie Lane looks at how the different styles of housekeeping in her novels relate to the social issues of the day.

The Jane Austen Quiz and Puzzle Book

This book offers an intimate and intriguing account of Jane Austen's relations, from 1704, when her great-grandmother was left a widow with six children to support, through to 1870, and the destinies of her many nephews and nieces. Drawing extensively on letters and memoirs written by the Austen family over a period of 150 years, this book traces the development of the family from vigorous Georgian opportunism to respectable Victorian gentility.

Maggie Lane

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