What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew

OK, so maybe you can live quite nicely without ever learning about the Order of Precedence, rules for being presented at Court or the difference between a Hogshead and a dram.

If you're like me, however, you love the novels of Regency and Victorian England.

I couldn't get enough of Jane Austin with her cool and witty observations on the marriage game, the passionate writings of Charlotte Brontë that seemed to reflect her own inner demons, the bucolic romances of George Eliot or Thomas Hardy's tragi-comic portrayals of men's and women's conflicts within an indifferent society.

These novelists' contemporaries understood the nuances of the society in which they placed their characters, but the modern American reader will not. For this reason, What Jane Austin Ate and Charles Dickens Knew is an indispensible reference book. The cultural literacy it provides can only enhance your reading of England's 19th Century literary greats.

Posted July 3, 2000 to amazon.com