Jane Austen In Bath

Jane Austen in Bath: Walking Tours of the Writer’s City is a beautifully illustrated book organized into four walking tours around the city of Bath–where she set both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion–two novels that mirrored her own experience: that of an impressionable, optimistic young girl hoping to meet the man she would marry and later, that of a mature woman disappointed in love. It was in Bath that many of Austen’s own romantic adventures and misadventures occurred, and this book artfully weaves together the story of Austen’s life there with those of her beloved characters. This guidebook describes the places frequented by Austen and her characters. Readers can stroll along the shady, tree-lined walk where Anne Elliot met Captain Wentworth after he returned from seven years at sea, and visit the galleries that hosted the glittering balls where the impressionable young Catherine Moreland made her debut. Bath is an exquisite, perfectly preserved Georgian town located in the stunning countryside just an hour and a half from London. It was a spa town in Austen’s day and still is. The streets, crescents, gardens, and buildings look almost exactly the same as they did then. Many of the places that she frequented are still there–visitors can still buy the traditional Sally Lunn rolls at the same bakery/caf? that Austen frequented; enter the famous Pump Rooms and Assembly Rooms where she drank the waters, gossiped, and danced; stroll the unique Georgian crescents and pleasure gardens where she enjoyed fireworks and lavish public breakfasts; and see the homes Austen and her family lived in, some of which are now open to the public. Jane Austen in Bath is the perfect companion to discovering the vibrant and fashionable social scene of Bath during both Austen’s time and today.

Northanger Abbey (1817) is a parody of the gothic novels that were fashionable in Austens' day. It follows the straightforward and innocent young Catherine Morland, who comes to Fullerton on the request of her neighbours. An avid reader of romantic novels, her utopian world is destroyed when she is forced to tackle the bitter realities of life....

A LOVE STORY LOST IN PRIDE & PREJUDICE... It is high summer when Ellie Bentley joins an archaeological dig at Jane Austen's childhood home. She's always had a talent for 'seeing' into the past and is not easily disturbed by her encounters with Mr Darcy's ghost at the house where she's staying. When Ellie travels into the past she discovers exactly what happened whilst Jane danced her way through the snowy winter of 1796. As Steventon Rectory and all its characters come to life, Ellie discovers the true love story lost in Pride and Prejudice - a tale which has its own consequences for her future destiny, changing her life beyond imagination.

John Matthews' "Bath: An Adumbration in Rhyme" (1795) is a humorous picture of a typical day in the most fashionable resort town of late Georgian England. For the gouty and the infirm, Bath offered health: its mineral waters, whether bathed in or drunk, were thought to relieve a variety of complaints. For everyone else, there was endless entertainment, from the morning visit to the Pump Room to the famous public balls held four evenings a week. Bath was also the city that Jane Austen knew best, lived in longest, and wrote most about. Every one of her novels at least mentions Bath, and large portions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are set there. Published in 1795, Matthews' poem captures the town just two years before Austen visited it for the first time. The sights and sounds he describes are the very ones that would have greeted a twenty-one-year-old Austen or a seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland.This edition offers an array of critical resources that use "Bath: An Adumbration in Rhyme" to deepen readers' appreciation of Austen's life and work. The Biographical Essay explores parallels between the lives of John Matthews and Jane Austen. The Contextual Essay introduces readers to the tradition of the "Bath satire," a popular genre in the late eighteenth century that Austen refined and expanded in her two Bath novels. The notes on the text provide not only historical and cultural information, but images of late Georgian Bath and direct connections between the poem and Austen's novels.

It’s often said that a good book takes us somewhere we’ve never been before, and here’s the proof: a book-lover’s Baedeker to more than 500 literary locales across the United States and Europe. Novel Destinations invites readers to follow in the footsteps of much-loved authors, discover the scenes that sparked their imaginations, glimpse the lives they led, and share a bit of the experiences they transformed so eloquently into print. If you’re looking to indulge in literary adventure, you’ll find all the inspiration and information you need here, along with behind-the-scenes stories such as these: After Ernest Hemingway survived two near-fatal plane crashes during an African safari, he perused his obituaries and sipped champagne on a canal-side terrace in Venice. Washington Irving's wisteria-draped cottage in the Hudson Valley was once occupied by members of the Van Tassel family, immortalized in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A mysterious incident at a stone tower near Dublin made such a vivid impression on James Joyce that he drew on it for the opening scene of Ulysses. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle consulted on the mystery of Agatha Christie's 1926 disappearance before she resurfaced under an assumed name in northern England. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables was inspired by a seaside manse in Salem, Massachusetts, infamous witch trials in which his ancestor played a role.