Customer Reviews

Jane Austen and the English Landscape

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Mavis Batey takes the reader on a relaxed written tour of the pastoral Britain of Jane Austen's time. She has researched the philosophical and poetic background--Cowper, Gilpin, Rousseau, Repton and others--of the late 1700s and early 1800s to help the reader understand the literary climate that influenced Jane's own written portraits of life in her time. I particularly enjoyed the warm pictures she painted of Austen family life--as the Austens worked in their gardens and walked through their shrubberies . . Mavis connects each of Jane's books with Jane's response to the familial and intellectual landscape of the correlating time. And she does all this without wearying us. I think this is one book about Jane of which Jane would approve. I also found it in my university library, and I want it!

I checked this book out of my university library several times and finally had to buy it. Batey's scholarship is thorough and impeccable. I have turned to the book as a resource repeatedly, and also have joyfully read the work for the sheer pleasure of it. If you need to know about Gilpin and the Picturesque, Austen and the Rousseau connection, or the Responsible Landlord in Austen's novels, get this book for your reference shelf. A must for serious Janites.

This is a beautiful book and I'm so glad I got a copy. It's also quite informative. I think it's worth the price for the chapter that focuses on Humphrey Repton/Stoneleigh Abbey alone, but there is much more to the book than that. It gives a great context for the landscape design movements popular in Jane Austen's day. There is a chapter about the area in and around Steventon that she would have known. As for Stoneleigh Abbey, the chapter "A Mere Nothing Before Repton" describes this great country house on 700 +/- acres in Warwickshire that Jane Austen's cousin Thomas Leigh inherited in 1806. Jane, her mother, and sister Cassandra visited Stoneleigh Abbey with Thomas Leigh that year, and Mrs. Austen described it in a surviving letter to her daughter-in-law Mary. Leigh later engaged Repton to make over the grounds (though didn't live to see them carried out - the next heirs did). The reproductions of Repton's "before" and "after" watercolors from the "Red Book" he produced for Stoneleigh Abbey are a highlight of the book for me. They're gorgeous (also depicted on the dust jacket) and shown to advantage on the large-sized pages of the book. There are also b&w views of Repton's watercolors for the ancient gatehouse at Stoneleigh, and "before" and "after" views of the walls Repton suggested for removal. The author believes, and I have to agree, that this property and the1806 visit would later show its influence in Mansfield Park. There is also a chapter on landlords, which focuses on Edward Austen (later Knight), Jane's brother, and his estates Godmersham and Chawton, compared to Mr. Knightley. The illustrations here include photos of Godmersham House and the park, etc. today, and period engravings of both houses, and a (unfortunately, very small) reproduction of a 1741 map of Chawton grounds. (in another chapter, there is a large color watercolor of Chawton House). The other chapters are also excellent. "The Agonies of Sensibility" covers the influence of Rousseau & novels such as Charlotte Smith's; "The Gothic Imagination" - a very interesting chapter with several color reproductions of period paintings. I don't recall reading anywhere before that Gilbert White, the naturalist who lived in Selbourne had a rustic hermitage behind his house (about 4 miles from Steventon), and Austen may have seen/known of it (there is a color period picture of it); and the chapter "Enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque" is also fascinating. Finally, "The Beautiful Grounds at Pemberley" chapter discusses (among other things) how Mr. Darcy's good taste and judgment is reflected in his choices for the grounds at Pemberley. Beautiful selection of period watercolors, paintings (many in color), and engravings throughout. If you are interested in Jane Austen but also the broader landscape design concepts/influence of her era, you'll probably love this book.