Eavesdropping On Jane Austen's England: How Our Ancestors Lived Two Centuries Ago

Author: Roy Adkins

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $40.00 AUD
  • : 9781408703960
  • : Little, Brown Book Group
  • : Little, Brown
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  • : May 2013
  • : 234mm X 153mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 39.99
  • : June 2013
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • :
  • : Roy Adkins
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  • : Hardback
  • : 1
  • :
  • :
  • : 942.073
  • : 448
  • :
  • : 16pp b/w
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Barcode 9781408703960
9781408703960

Description

Jane Austen, arguably the greatest novelist of the English language, lived from 1775 to 1817. Her fiction focuses on the gentry and aristocracy, and her heroines are young women looking for love. Yet the comfortable, tranquil country that she brilliantly devised is a complete contrast to the England in which she actually lived. For twenty-nine of Jane Austen's forty-one years, the country was embroiled in war. Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England explores the real England of that time. Roy and Lesley Adkins vividly portray fascinating aspects of the daily lives of ordinary people, from forced marriages and the sale of wives in marketplaces to boys and girls working down mines or as chimney sweeps, this book eavesdrops on the daily chore of fetching water, the horror of ghosts and witches, Saint Monday, bull baiting, sedan chairs, highwaymen, the stench of corpses swinging on roadside gibbets and the horrors of surgery without anaesthetics.
Giving a voice to these forgotten people and revealing how they worked, played and struggled to survive, Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England is an authoritative and gripping account that is sometimes humorous, often shocking, but always entertaining.

Promotion info

* Review copies mailed to the press* Existing authors website http://www.adkinshistory.com/

Reviews

We know a great deal about Nelson, but what about the ordinary seamen? ... Here the Adkins give them the attention they merit ... Having read widely on the subject, the authors have got into the sailors' lives by way of many of their letters and diaries; an enthralling read -- Nicholas Bagnall Sunday Telegraph, 5* praise for JACK TAR

Author description

Roy and Lesley Adkins are husband-and-wife writers and archaeologists, the bestselling authors of over eighteen widely acclaimed books on social and naval history, archaeology, ancient Rome, ancient Greece and Egyptology. Their books include the bestselling Jack Tar, Trafalgar, The War for All the Oceans, Empires of the Plain and The Keys of Egypt and have so far been translated into sixteen languages worldwide. Roy and Lesley Adkins are elected Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Members of the Institute for Archaeologists. For further information about them and their books, see their website www.adkinshistory.com.