Deirdre Le Faye will be visiting Chawton House Library on 6 June to talk about her latest book, Jane Austen’s Country Life.
This richly illustrated book explores and evokes country life in Jane Austen‘s day, offering new perspectives on her life and work.
We caught up with Deirdre Le Faye to find out more.
Where did the idea for your new book come from?
The idea for the book had been growing on me for a while. A long time ago I had thought about doing something about flowers and gardens, which led me to think about gardens, animals and the landscape. I then wrote a short parish history on Steventon in Hampshire, where Jane Austen had lived for the first 25 years of her life, which made me think more precisely about what Steventon must have been like with its farms, crops and animals – and Jane in the middle of it.
Then I started looking more specifically in her letters for references to country living, and not only in her letters but also her parents’ letters, especially from her mother. Gradually I realised that people write and talk about her as a parson’s daughter and there’s plenty about her life in Bath and Lyme Regis and living in Southampton and Chawton, but there wasn’t very much about her rural background. Everyone seems to have ignored the fact that Jane was also a farmer’s daughter who was always tramping through the countryside so I did think that here was an opportunity to make a book out of that.
Has writing this book been more challenging, given it focuses on a previously unexplored aspect of Austen’s life?
I realised that for the modern reader, of whom very few live in the country and know anything about farming, I needed to give more detailed descriptions about the rural way of life, including crops and farm animals, household economy and even the weather.
I was amused to see how often Jane talks about the weather in her letters; it was always raining and the family was always coming down with colds. It was also probably fairly smelly and noisy. Jane’s mother had her domestic cows and poultry yard close to the rectory and the sheep were on the hillside so certainly there would have been mooing, cackling and bleating heard within the house.
We know that Austen’s father was a parson so how did that fit with running a farm?
Jane’s father had to earn money from farming because he was paid no salary as a parson. I imagine that the conversation at the Steventon rectory must have been as much about the state of the land and which cow was going to calve and so on as it would have been about his sermons or teaching Latin to pupils, which was another source of income for Jane’s father.
To what extent does Austen weave rural life into her novels?
Rural life does come out in Jane’s novels although it’s subtly done. It’s more apparent in Mansfield Park, which depicts country life from the wealthy landowner’s point of view. Emma is certainly all about farming but Mr Knightley is more a gentleman farmer and not a large landowner. Persuasion does have a bit about farming but the story focuses much more on Bath.
All her published novels have something about the countryside, as that’s where the heroines are living. However, you have to look for it, as Jane doesn’t begin a chapter by describing the countryside; it’s simply not the way she works. She focuses on her characters and then she takes in a little of the background behind them. For example, in Sense and Sensibility, Marianne Dashwood and her sister, Elinor, are scampering around the Devonshire countryside and so we gradually learn what the countryside there is like, although it’s not described in its own right.
Signed copies of Jane Austen’s Country Life, published by Frances Lincoln, will be on sale at the book talk with Deirdre Le Faye at a special price of £15 (RRP £20), with proceeds helping to support the charity’s work.
The event runs from 6.30pm to 8.30pm on Friday, 6 June, at Chawton House Library. Tickets cost £11.00 (or £8.50 for students/friends) from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/evening-talk-and-book-launch-with-deirdre-le-faye-friday-6th-june-2014-tickets-11540320409 or call Chawton House Library on 01420 541010.