Jane Austen and the English Landscape

by Mavis Batey

In late Georgian and Regency England established attitudes towards nature and the countryside, whether in art, literature or landscape gardening, were being challenged on many fronts. Jane Austen's heroines, brought up with well-established Georgian standards, were as susceptible in matters of 'Taste and Feeling' as anyone else and, as this book so clearly demonstrates, their responses to landscape strikingly reflect the ramifications of fashionable taste and the influence of their reading.
As a landscape historian steeped in the novels and letters of Jane Austen, Mavis Batey is the best of guides to the ideas and subtleties behind the real and fictional settings of the novels.

Genres: Jane Austen, Nonfiction

135 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 1991

About the author

Mavis Lilian Batey, MBE (née Lever; 5 May 1921 – 12 November 2013), was a British code-breaker during World War II. She was one of the leading female codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

She later became a historian of gardening, who campaigned to save historic parks and gardens, and an author. Batey was awarded the Veitch Memorial Medal in 1985, and made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1987, in both cases for her work on the conservation of gardens.

source: Amazon

Reviews

[Renuka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Austen and the English Landscape by Mavis Batey I can recommend, as being very useful to understand how JA informs us of the values & personalities of her characters through their relationship with their landscape.
It has 9 chapters, and the chapter 3 'The Agonies of Sensibility' is focused on SS, while Chapter 4 'The Gothic Imagination' on NA, Chapter 6 'The Beautiful Grounds of Pemberley' on PP, and the chapter 7 ‘A Mere nothing before Repton’ (a real quotation) is almost exclusively dedicated to MFP - Compton and Sotherton in MFP relating to properties of JA relatives Aldershop and Stoneleigh Abbey - and consulted on by Humphrey Repton.
The chapter 8 'A Responsible Landlord' is essential to understand who and what kind of man an ideal man in JA universe is. The chapter also made very clear to me the depth behind the description when Emma looks over the way Donwell Abbey is situated in the landscape - which till now had not been quite ‘quite’ clear - why it was there at all and what it exactly means. All clear now. It's not about the scene at all - and it’s all about Mr George Knightley.
And then one compares this description with the description of the Hayter property in Persuasion...and wonder what relevance there could be...
I am so glad I read it - useful for all JA books, for character exploration and background information.

[Annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting reading on History of Gardening and how it applies to Jane Austen novels.

[Vanessa Sanchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved the photos and in-depth descriptions of how landscape intertwines with Austen.