This new biography of Jane Austen differs from others in its special immersion in the era, an extremely careful and accurate recreation of the atmosphere in which the author of works beloved by millions of readers lived and worked.
The daughter of a country parson, Jane never had her own home and was forced to move from place to place all her life, sometimes enjoying the hospitality of wealthy relatives, and at times huddling in rented housing.
Historian of English life Lucy Worsley takes the reader to addresses associated with the life and work of the great compatriot, introducing the reader to the world of things that surrounded her and recreating the atmosphere of her everyday life.
Written on the basis of a huge amount of factual material - letters and memoirs of contemporaries, newspaper publications, literary works of that time, the writings of Jane Austen herself - this “biography through the prism of everyday life” helps to understand why such great importance is attached to the home in her work, which is perceived sometimes as a cozy nest, sometimes as a place of confinement, sometimes as an unattainable dream.