Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Essay on Jane Austen, Julia Epstein - Jane Austen's Era

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JANE AUSTEN'S ERA

JANE AUSTEN'S ENGLAND

In the late eighteenth century, England and Wales comprised fifty‐two counties, called shires until the time of William the Conqueror. Jane Austen's novels, as her life, took place in the counties north and south of London. She came from Hampshire, abbreviated as Hants., southwest of London. Industrial development centered in the north, with heavy manufacturing beginning to grow in Birmingham, cotton factories in Manchester, and coal mining in Newcastle. Bath, west of London, was the social center of fashionable England, and figures prominently in Austen's life and art. Portsmouth, a featured location in Mansfield Park and the place where Austen's naval brothers received their early training, was a naval base on the southern coast of England. And London, on the river Thames, was the metropolis.

Change was the predominant characteristic of England during Jane Austen's brief life. Austen was a...

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1. Introduction
2. Chronology
3. About Jane Austen
4. Jane Austen At Work
5. Jane Austen's Era
6. Jane Austen's Works
7. Jane Austen As Studied
8. Copyright

1. Jane Austen