Subject: Austen, Jane (Keywords)

January 1804. Anne Sharpe arrives at Godmersham Park in Kent to take up the position of governess. At thirty-one years old, she has no previous experience of either teaching or fine country houses. But her mother has died and she desperately needs an independent income if she is to survive. For h...

January 1804. Anne Sharpe arrives at Godmersham Park in Kent to take up the position of governess. At thirty-one years old, she has no previous experience of either teaching or fine country houses. But her mother has died and she desperately needs an independent income if she is to survive. For h...

The life of Jane Austen remains fairly opaque. However, in spite of this the author has written a very observant and revealing biography of this remarkable writer whose characters are as alive today in their longings as they were 200 years ago.

Jane Austen is regarded as one of the greatest novelists in the English literary canon, and recent film and television adaptations of her works have brought them to a new audience almost 200 years after her untimely death. In this book, Andrew Norman presents an account of her life.

This telling of the story of Jane's life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the way in which home is used in her novels to mean both a place of pleasure and a prison.