The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen: A Novel by a Gentleman Volume I

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen reimagines the life of England's most famous female author by asking: How would her life have changed if she had married and had a child? How would this thinking woman and sensitive soul have responded not to a ballroom flirtation but to a real relationship that developed over time? How would shouldering the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood have changed her as a person and a writer? The Marriage of Jane Austen is the only Austen-themed novel that delves deeply into the psyche of a woman falling in love'and the only novel to address what marriage in the early 1800s would have been like for a woman of intelligence and passion. Using the Austen oeuvre as a foundation, this book takes the heroine out of her safe country village and tosses her into a world that is far more complex and exciting. As the story develops, the protagonist becomes engaged in matters such as the slave trade, the advances that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution, the growing conflicts between science and religion, the antagonism between aristocrats and the rising mercantile class, and the horrifying impacts of the never-ending war with France on English citizens. And all the while, she falls ever more in love with the man who introduces her to this bigger and more dangerous world. Being a courtship novel, Volume I concludes with a happy ending, but it goes beyond a comedy of manners to touch deep, honest feelings between a woman and man. Volume I of The Marriage of Jane Austen sets up the complexity and contradictions of marriage that are addressed in the following volumes: the richness of a requited love set against the often cruel realities of life in the Regency age'for husband as well as wife.