Nearly two centuries after her death, Jane Austen remains the most beloved of novelists in the English language, incomparable in the wit, warmth and insight with which she chronicles the wayward hearts of her unforgettable characters. Her work also offers a vivid depiction of rural life in late Georgian and Regency England, its country balls and ivy-covered vicarages, its social hierarchies and its anxieties about property and income. Yet the milieu Austen depicted is only one aspect of her era. For 29 of her 41 years the country was embroiled in war. Dramatic changes in industry and agriculture were transforming the country's physical and social landscape. This book offers a new view of her world in a wide-ranging and detailed social history of English life in the early nineteenth century, from weddings to childbearing, from education to fashion, from labor to leisure and finally to the rituals of death.--From publisher description.

"First published in Great Britain as Eavesdropping on Jane Austen's England by Little, Brown"--Title page verso.

Wedding bells -- Breeding -- Toddler to teenager -- Home and hearth -- Fashions and filth -- Sermons and superstitions -- Wealth and work -- Leisure and pleasure -- On the move -- Dark deeds -- Medicine men -- Last words.