Jane Austen's 'outlandish Cousin'


Book Description

Eliza de Feuillide is best known as the spirited first cousin of Jane Austen whose colourful life and travels are recounted through her extensive correspondence with Jane, the Austen family, and other friends and relatives. Born in Calcutta in 1761, she spent an impecunious childhood in England and then France, where she married an aristocratic French Officer and lived through the Revolution, surviving her husband, who was guillotined in 1794. Many of Eliza's letters vividly illuminate the lives of Jane Austen and her family, as well as revealing the wider world against which Austen's novels are set. The letters were never intended for publication and are all the more revealing for being long before Jane became a well-known authoress. This new biography collects all the surviving letters, providing many valuable new insights into the background to Jane Austen's novels as well as being a highly entertaining social and historical record in its own right.




Jane Austen's Cousin


Book Description

Eliza de Feuillide seemed fascinating and outlandish to her cousins in rural eighteen century England. When she visited their village, her appearance was electrifying. She was an attractive, accomplished French countess with a vivacious personality who inspired their imaginations and regaled them with stories of life in London and Paris where she hobnobbed with French nobility and wore the latest fashions. One of these impressionable younger cousins would find Eliza’s stories so fascinating that she would incorporate elements of Eliza’s life into some of the most famous novels in English literature. This cousin was Jane Austen. Yet Eliza’s life was not as glamorous as Jane or her Austen cousins might have thought. She faced many tragedies in her life that wealth and social class could not protect her against. She was also forced to adapt and reexamine her priorities in a way that would dramatically change her life choices and result in a more sedate lifestyle. Read about the perseverance and courage of the real person behind several fictional characters in Jane Austen’s writings and novels and the deeper connection Eliza had to the Austen family.




Dearest Cousin Jane


Book Description

In Dearest Cousin Jane, an enchanting new novel that draws on historical fact, Jill Pitkeathley paints a luminous portrait of the true-life cousin of a literary legend—from her flirtatious younger years to her profound influence on one of the world's most beloved authors. Free-spirited and seductive—outrageous, precocious, and a well-known flirt—Countess Eliza de Feuillide has an unquenchable thirst for life and a glamorous air that captivates everyone around her. Rumored to have been born of a mad love affair between her mother and the great Warren Hastings of the East India Company, Eliza sees the world as her playground—filled with grand galas, theater, and romance—and she will let nothing hold her down. Even tragedy cannot dim her enthusiasm. Losing her only child at an early age and widowed when her husband—the dashing French count Jean de Feuillide—is claimed by Madame la Guillotine during the dark days of the Reign of Terror, Eliza is determined to remain indomitable, unpredictable, and unfettered. And it is this passionate spirit that she brings to a simple English country parsonage to influence the life, the work, and the world of her unsuspecting cousin . . . a quiet and unassuming young writer named Jane Austen.




I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend


Book Description

Secrets, intrigue, and meddling in love – I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend by Cora Harrison is a historical romantic comedy, perfect for fans of Bridgerton. Jane says that if I am to be the heroine of this story, something will throw a hero in my way . . . I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend is the secret diary of Jenny Cooper, Jane Austen’s teenage friend and confidante. Their evenings are a blur of beautiful dresses, balls, gossip and romance; their days are spent writing about them – Jenny in her diary, Jane in her first attempts at fiction. When Jenny falls utterly in love with a handsome naval officer, obstacles stand in their way. Who better to help her than Jane herself, who already considers herself an expert in love and relationships?




Jane Austen: A Family Record


Book Description

This book is the outcome of years of research in Austen archives, and stems from the original family biography by W. and R. A. Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: her Life and Letters. Jane Austen, A Family Record was first published in 1989, and this new edition incorporates information that has come to light since then, and provides new illustrations and updated family trees. Le Faye gives a detailed account of Austen s life and literary career. She has collected together documented facts as well as the traditions concerning the novelist, and places her within the context of a widespread, affectionate and talented family group. Readers will learn how Austen transformed the stuff of her peaceful life in the Hampshire countryside into six novels that are amongst the most popular in the English language. This fascinating record of Austen and her family will be of great interest to general readers and scholars alike.




Selected Letters


Book Description

In one of her personal letters, Jane Austen wrote "Little Matters they are to be sure, but highly important." In fact, letter-writing was something of an addiction for young women of Jane Austen's time and in her social position, and Austen's letters have a freedom and familiarity that only intimate writing can convey. Wiser than her critics, who were disappointed that her correspondence dwelt on gossip and the minutiae of everyday living, Austen understood the importance of "Little Matters," of the emotional and material details of individual lives shared with friends and family through the medium of the letter. Ironic, acerbic, always entertaining, Jane Austen's letters are a fascinating record not only of her own day-to-day existence, but of the pleasures and frustrations experienced by women of her social class which are so central to her novels. Vivien Jones's selection includes nearly two-thirds of Austen's surviving correspondence, and her lively introduction and notes set the novelist's most private writings in their wider cultural context.




By a Lady


Book Description

A tale of time travel, true love, and Jane Austen New York actress C.J. Welles, a die-hard Jane Austen fan, is on the verge of landing her dream role: portraying her idol in a Broadway play. But during her final audition, she is mysteriously transported to Bath, England, in the year 1801. And Georgian England, with its rigid and unforgiving social structure and limited hygienic facilities, is not quite the picturesque costume drama C.J. had always imagined. Just as she wishes she could click her heels together and return to Manhattan, C.J. meets the delightfully eccentric Lady Dalrymple, a widowed countess who takes C.J. into her home, introducing her as a poor relation to Georgian society—including the dashing Earl of Darlington and his cousin, Jane Austen! When a crisis develops, C.J.—in a race against time—becomes torn between two centuries. An attempt to return to her own era might mean forfeiting her blossoming romance with the irresistible Darlington and her growing friendship with Jane Austen, but it’s a risk she must take. And in the midst of this remarkable series of events, C.J. discovers something even more startling—a secret from her own past that may explain how she wound up in Bath in the first place.




While We Were Watching Downton Abbey


Book Description

From the bestselling author of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding comes a novel about four friends who share a passion for a beloved British television show that will change all of their lives. When the concierge of The Alexander, a historic Atlanta apartment building, invites his fellow residents to join him for weekly screenings of Downton Abbey, four very different people find themselves connecting with the addictive drama, and—even more unexpectedly—with each other... Samantha Davis married young and for the wrong reason: the security of old Atlanta money—for herself and for her orphaned brother and sister. She never expected her marriage to be complicated by love and compromised by a shattering family betrayal. Claire Walker is now an empty nester and struggling author who left her home in the suburbs for the old world charm of The Alexander, and for a new and productive life. But she soon wonders if clinging to old dreams can be more destructive than having no dreams at all. And then there’s Brooke MacKenzie, a woman in constant battle with her faithless ex-husband. She’s just starting to realize that it’s time to take a deep breath and come to terms with the fact that her life is not the fairy tale she thought it would be. For Samantha, Claire, Brooke—and Edward, who arranges the weekly gatherings—it will be a season of surprises as they forge a bond that will sustain them through some of life’s hardest moments—all of it reflected in the unfolding drama, comedy, and convergent lives of Downton Abbey.




Cousin Kate


Book Description

Georgette Heyer, bestselling Queen of Regency Romance, invites readers to an extraordinary Gothic tale of love, mystery, and intrigue. A surprising invitation Kate Malvern is rescued from penury by her aunt Minerva, who brings her to stay at Staplewood. But the household is strange and strained—Kate's uncle lives in his own private wing, and her handsome, moody cousin Torquil lives in another. A dark family secret As bizarre events unfold and Kate begins to question the reasons for her aunt's unexpected generosity, she has no one to confide in but her cousin Philip. Sympathetic though he may appear, will he tell her what she most needs to know... before it's too late? Praise for Cousin Kate: "Miss Heyer serves up a very different sort of tale in the same period setting, nothing less than a full-fledged Gothic. And a very expert job she does of it, too, complete with a remote and forbidding country house, screams in the night, dark hints of something best left unmentioned... nicely leavened with wit, romance, and wonderful period slang."—Publishers Weekly




Jane of Austin


Book Description

“Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience - or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope.” ― Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility Just a few years after their father’s business scandal shatters their lives, Jane and Celia Woodward find themselves forced out of their San Francisco tea shop. The last thing Jane wants is to leave their beloved shop on Valencia Street, but when Celia insists on a move to Austin, Texas, the sisters pack up their kid sister Margot and Jane’s tea plants, determined to start over yet again. But life in Austin isn’t all sweet tea and breakfast tacos. Their unusual living situation is challenging and unspoken words begin to fester between Jane and Celia. When Jane meets and falls for up-and-coming musician Sean Willis, the chasm grows deeper. While Sean seems to charm everyone in his path, one person is immune – retired Marine Captain Callum Beckett. Callum never meant to leave the military, but the twin losses of his father and his left leg have returned him to the place he least expected—Texas. In this modern spin on the Austen classic, Sense and Sensibility, the Woodward sisters must contend with new ingredients in unfamiliar kitchens, a dash of heartbreak, and the fragile hope that maybe home isn't so far away.