Book review: Jane Austen, Real and Imagined Worlds

Oliver MacDonagh (1924-2002) was a distinguished historian. In this elegantly written book he turns a historian’s eye on the novels of Jane Austen in order to underline what they reveal of the culture and mores of her time. It is particularly fascinating on the role of the clergy, which he descibes as a kind of ‘social husbandry‘, a role more akin to a social worker rather than saviour of souls, and on the question of money, where he examines Jane Austen’s own financial affairs. Of course you do need to be a bit of a Janeite to really enjoy this, indeed it would be hard to get through without a fairly close acquaintanceship with all of her six completed novels plus one unfinished. But then I am a bit of a Janeite, so I just loved it.