The Austen Girls

Reviewed By  Janet Mawdesley       June 23, 2020

 

Author  Lucy Worsley

Distributor:      Bloomsbury Childrens Books
ISBN:                 9781408882047
Publisher:         Bloomsbury Children's Books
Release Date:   May 2020  

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As many of you know Jane Austen was a writer of wonderful fiction stories about life in the Georgian era, but more specifically the Regency period, writing about ordinary people and the society in which they lived. Her more well-known novels are Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility amongst others.

But what of Jane Austen and her wider family of nieces and brothers, and the life she and they lived, when the main purpose from birth for all girls, was to marry well. Lucy Worsley in her latest historic novel The Austen Girls brings the world of the Regency marriage ‘mart’ alive through the eyes and emotions of Aunt Jane’s nieces Anna and Fanny.

Anna has always been told she must marry well. She has the looks and the breeding but her father is a farmer, whereas her cousin Fanny has both the breeding and the money but also has to marry well, but there is not as much pressure to succeed and succeed well.

As the girls look forward to their first local Ball with great excitement, they begin to wonder what the night and their future holds in store for them.  Sadly, the Ball does not go well for them which sets off a chain of unprecedented events which will see Anna returning to the farm in anger and despair, leaving Fanny deeply hurt and upset.

Fanny begins to question why Aunt Jane, who lives with them, but often goes to London, has never married and where she gets her wealth from, as it obviously does not come from her father, Jane’s brother. It is not until tragedy strikes, with the local parson being arrested for thieving that the other life of Aunt Jane becomes very real, as she and Fanny set out to try and get Dominic Drummer released from prison.

The Austen Girls holds every element of romantic fiction, Regency style, between the pages and under Lucy Worsley’s skilled hands comes vibrantly to life, creating a work of fiction Jane Austen would consider as really rather excellent.