Oh, the Places We Will Go…in Austen Novels
Through Jane Austen’s novels, I was first introduced, at the age of 12, to beautiful English estates and a land beyond my imagination. I fell in love with the time, the homes, the heroes and heroines, and I have spent a lifetime admiring Austen’s works. Do you know the many places found within Austen’s novels?
from Persuasion
Lyme Regis – where Louisa Musgrove falls from the Cobb; later falls in love with Captain Benwick
Uppercross – the Musgroves’ family home
Bath – city where the Elliots retrenched and where Anne and Captain Wentworth are reunited
Kellynch Hall – Sir Walter Elliot’s ancestral home
________________________
from Northanger Abbey
Putney, London – from where the Thorpes hail
Oxford – where James Morland attends university
Bath – the city Catherine Morland visits; she meets Henry Tilney there
Northanger Abbey, Gloucestershire – the family seat of the Tilney family
Fullerton, Wiltshire – the village from which the Morlands hail
_______________________________
from Emma
Bath – where Mr. Elton travels to secure a wife
Brunswick Square, London – home of John and Isabella Knightley
Donwell Abbey, Surrey – Mr. Knightley’s estate
Randalls, Surrey – where Mr. and Mrs. Weston reside
Hartfield, Surrey – where the Woodhouses live; Emma’s home
Highbury, Surrey – the village near the estates of Hartfield, Randalls, and Donwell Abbey
______________________________
from Mansfield Park
Sotherton – Mr. Rushworth’s estate
Stoneleigh Abbey, the inspiration for Sotherton
Portsmouth – the place from where Fanny Price hails; her family resides there
Antigua – Sir Thomas owns a plantation there
London – from which Maria and Julia elope
Thornton Lacey – the clerical living Edmund will receive as part of his orders
Mansfield Parsonage – where first Mr. and Mrs. Norris reside; later it is the home for the Grants; Mary and Henry Crawford visit at the Parsonage
Mansfield Park – the home of the Bertram family and of Fanny Price
_________________________
from Pride and Prejudice
Brighton, Sussex – where George Wickham is stationed; from which he and Lydia Bennet elope
Gracechurch Street, London – home of Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, Elizabeth Bennet’s maternal uncle and his wife
Hunsford, Kent – Mr. Collins’ parsonage
Rosings Park, Kent – the estate of Lady Catherine De Bourgh; Darcy’s aunt
Netherfield, Hertfordshire – Mr. Charles Bingley’s let estate
Lucas Lodge, Hertfordshire – home of Sir William Lucas’s family
Meryton, Hertfordshire – the village nearest to Longbourn
Longbourn, Hertfordshire – home to the Bennet family
Pemberley, Derbyshire – Fitzwilliam Darcy’s estate
___________________________
from Sense and Sensibility
Cleveland, Somersetshire – the Palmer’s estate; where Marianne Dashwood falls ill
Allenham, Devonshire – the estate Willoughby is to inherit
Berkeley Street, London – Mrs. Jennings’ London address
Combe Magna, Somersetshire – Willoughby’s estate
Delaford, Devonshire – Colonel Brandon’s home
Barton Park – the home of Sir John Middleton
Barton Cottage – the home for the Dashwood sisters and their mother
Norland Park, Sussex – the Dashwood ancestral home
In 1914, a young Swedish minor named Car Eric Wickman left his job as a diamond drill operator in the rugged Mesabi Iron Ore Range in Hibbing, Minnesota, to open a Hupmobile (Goodyear Tire) franchise. The venture cost him $3000. Except to himself, young Wickman failed to make a single sale, so the enterprising young Swede abandoned his dealership dreams. 
The “jitney bus” proved popular with the miners. By moving things about with the bus, Wickman managed to add two extra seats. Passengers also rode on the running boards and fenders of the vehicle. Realizing he required more vehicles, Wickman convinced a blacksmith friend to go into partnership with him. Together, they purchased another Hupmobile. The car was enlarged to seat ten. The two men also expanded their routes. 
Eventually, Greyhound became part of the name of the company. A one-man, four-miles route in Minnesota became the world’s largest inter-city passenger carrier. “Wickman, it turns out, pretty much invented intercity bus travel—which for most Americans equals Greyhound, the company that emerged from that long-ago Hupmobile ride. ‘Greyhound has become generic for bus travel,’ says Robert Gabrick, author of Going The Greyhound Way. ‘Like Kleenex for tissues.’ Indeed, this classic American business icon—which, as it happens, is now owned by a British conglomerate—today has more than 7,300 employees, with estimated yearly sales of $820 million and 2,000 buses serving 3,800 destinations in 48 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces. ‘I’m amazed at Greyhound’s brand recognition,’ says DePaul University professor Joseph Schwieterman, an authority on intercity bus travel. ‘It’s an American success story.'” (
Princess Helena (Helena Augusta Victoria; Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein by marriage; 25 May 1846 – 9 June 1923) was the third daughter and fifth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Like the queen’s other children, Helena was educated by private tutors chosen by her father and his close friend and adviser, Baron Stockmar. At her birth, Albert reported to his brother, Ernest II, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, that Helena “came into this world quite blue, but she is quite well now”. He added that the Queen “suffered longer and more than the other times and she will have to remain very quiet to recover.”
After, Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria went into a profound depression that affected the remainder of her reign. Her children still under her care were expected to abandon their youthful pursuits and grieve for their beloved father, as did the Queen. At age sixteen, Helena was barely from the schoolroom, but Victoria’s few thoughts beyond her grief at Albert’s loss turned to finding an appropriate husband for a daughter that she had termed as the “least promising.” Victoria had written that “poor dear Lenchen, though most useful and active and clever and amiable, does not improve in looks and has great difficulty with her figure and her want of calm, quiet, graceful manners.” (Rappaport, Helen. Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO. Oxford. page 189.)
Three years later on another visit to Germany, Helena met another Prince Christian, this one of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg. On the maternal, Prince Christian held ties to a Danish noble family, as well as to the British royal family. His grandmother was the granddaughter of Frederick, King George II’s son. He was 15 years Helena’s senior. Unfortunately, the prince appeared older than he actually was, a fact that Victoria remarked upon on numerous occasions. Moreover, Christian was not the most intelligent of men (certainly nothing in the manner of Victoria’s “dear Albert”). He was not sophisticated or ambitious or very amiable. Nor did he possess a fortune worthy of Victoria’s daughter. Moreover, he had recently left his military post in the Prussian army. 
In my books, I often have my characters address their personal needs. For example, in A Touch of Grace, my heroine is working in the ladies’ retiring room as a seamstress at a ball, but as she is pregnant, she must sneak around to use the chamber pot that was meant for titled ladies. The heroine, Grace is married to a marquis, but she has run away from her husband and cannot let anyone know her identity. 
Born in Kirby Wiske (a village in the North Riding), Yorkshire, in 1515, Roger Ascham was the third son of John and Margaret Ascham. Ascham was the steward to Baron Scrope of Bolton. Roger Ascham was a scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education. In 1530, Ascham entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he studied Greek among other challenging subjects. He received his degree at the age of eighteen on 18 February 1534 and became a fellow of the college in March. At the age of twenty-one, Ascham became master of arts and began tutoring younger students. Ascham became reader in Greek around 1538 until Henry VII founded a lecture to take his place.
Ascham was educated at the house of Sir Humphrey Wingfield, a barrister, Ascham tells us, in the Toxophilus under a tutor named R. Bond. His preferred sport was archery, and Sir Humphrey “would at term times bring down from London both bows and shafts and go with them himself to see them shoot.” In 1545 Ascham published the treatise Toxophilus or the Schole or Partitions of Shooting partly in defense of archery against those who found the sport unbefitting a scholar. The work was dedicated to Henry VIII, who enjoyed the treatise so much that he granted Ascham a pension: ten pounds a year. Ascham was further honored by being assigned to tutor Prince Edward. 
Ladies in a country house were expected to practice the “correct” moral, social, and religious customs of the day. Not only were them women judged by these standards, but so were the rest of their family, especially if they acted from character. When Lydia Bennet elopes with George Wickham, she is considered a fallen woman, and by association her sisters were also considered of low morals. Such is the reason Darcy sets out to force a marriage between his old school chum and Elizabeth Bennet’s younger sisters. There would be those who criticized his marriage to Elizabeth because of her connections to trade, but the idea of marrying a woman who sister was of such low morals would not be easily overcome, even by a man of Darcy’s stature in Society. He cannot risk ruining his sister Georgiana’s Come Out by bringing a woman into her life who has relations of such low moral fiber. 
Facilities for the children were often quite sparse in comparison to the rest to the household. Girls’ toys were dolls and doll houses, perhaps a rocking horse or a small ball. Pamela Horn in Ladies of the Manor (page 32) tells us, “The clothing worn by well-to-do children for much of the Victorian and Edwardian period was cumbersome and uncomfortable. Little girls wore numerous petticoats – flannel in winter and stiffly starched cotton in summer. For outdoor excursions there were black-buttoned boots, ornate hats, and coats of pelisses, embellished with tucks, frills or pleats. There was also a large amount of ‘dressing up’ to cope with. According to Sarah Sedgwick, who was a nanny in several large households, winter clothing were retained, irrespective of the temperature, until late September. In winter, girls wore a vest, ‘a woollen binder, drawers, a bodice, a flannel petticoat and on top flannel dresses.’ Summer saw the flannel petticoat exchanged for one of lighter weight, ‘the binder was cotton instead of wool, and the frocks cotton, linen or muslin.’ The same clothes were never worn both morning and afternoon and a further complete change was required before the youngsters went downstairs for the ‘children’s hour.'”
These fabulous Thespians have brought us hours of viewing fun in Austen-inspired films. 
rtrayed Colonel Brandon in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility (21 February 1946 – 14 January 2016)
trayed Mr Weston in 2009’s Emma
28 February
“Whipping Boy”
“Not Worth a Hill of Beans”
“Cutting Off One’s Nose to Spite His Face”
Every Woman Dreams... 