Jane Austen Books online
I was searching yesterday for Hazel Jones’ latest book, The Other Knight Boys – about the younger sons (ie, rather than the heir, all the “spares”) of Edward Austen Knight, Jane Austen’s brother.
It was while on the site for Jane Austen Books, that I searched for my own book — they had purchased copies from me at the Louisville JASNA AGM (I gave a paper that year, in 2015). I had always put up information that potential purchasers needed to contact Jane Austen Books — Now I can announce:
Two Teens in the Time of Austen: Random Jottings, 2008-2015 is available for ONLINE ordering ($18; paperback).
Jane Austen Books is located in Novelty, Ohio, USA.
The Kindle version, Two Teens in the Time of Austen: Random Jottings, 2008-2013, is still available via Amazon ($3.50).
The Kindle version has a few less “blog posts,” but has some additional items not featured in the book; the book covers two years of further investigation into the Smiths and Goslings.
(Apologies in advance for typos introduced into those late additions.)
Both formats present information on the family of Emma Austen Leigh, which I am researching, and which is based nearly entirely on archival research of primary materials — thus all the posts on LETTERS and DIARIES.
Additional thoughts:
From the blog page “Two Teens on Kindle” — and (dimly mirrored) on the back cover of the book:
When Elizabeth Bennet captured the attention of Pemberley’s wealthy owner Mr. Darcy, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice so captured the attention of her sixteen-year-old nephew, James Edward Austen, that he concluded a poem of congratulations addressed to his aunt with,
And though Mr. Collins so grateful for all
Will Lady de Bourgh his dear patroness call,
‘Tis to your ingenuity really he owed
His living, his wife, and his humble abode.
The wife chosen by this son of a country clergyman experienced a youth far more stellar than his own, one befitting the wealth a landed-gentleman and Member of Parliament could provide. Emma Smith (1801-1876) and her friend and eventual sister-in-law Mary Gosling (1800-1842), through their personal writings – diaries and letters – have left a legacy of their lives dating from Regency London to early-Victorian England. Two Teens in the Time of Austen reconstructs this extended family’s biography, as well as recounts the chronicles of a Britain at war and on the brink of great change (social, political, industrial, financial).
England rejoiced in the summer of 1814, for the Napoleonic Wars were presumed to be at an end. This was a momentous year for the Smiths of Suttons and the Goslings of Roehampton Grove. Mary Gosling visited Oxford just as these national celebrations ended. Emma Smith’s father had died early in the year, leaving Mrs. Smith a 42-year-old widow: Augusta Smith gave birth to the youngest of her nine children days after her husband’s death. Emma began keeping diaries on 1 January 1815. The girls are, at this date, fourteen and thirteen years old. Mary’s stepmother hosted dazzling London parties; and Emma’s great-aunt hobnobbed with members of the Royal Family. The privileged daughters of gentlemen, their teen years are a mixture of schoolrooms, visits, travels to relatives, stays in London during the “Season”, and trips to Wales, Ireland, and the Continent — in fact, the Goslings visit the site of the Battle of Waterloo and Mary has left her impressions of the war-torn region. Here is a tale worthy of Jane Austen’s pen, as beaux dance and ladies choose their (life) partners. But happiness comes at a price for many.
Two Teens in the Time of Austen: Random Jottings introduces the people Jane Austen met – like the Chutes of the Vyne, as well as the niece she never lived to welcome into the family: Emma Austen Leigh, whose husband would later publish Recollections of the Early Days of the Vyne Hunt (1865) and A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870; revised, 1871).
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 
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