Longbourn
Page 36
One final note: in Pride and Prejudice the footman appears just once in the text, when he delivers a note to Jane (page 31 of Volume One, in my Penguin Classics edition). After that, he is never mentioned again.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I can’t remember when I first read Pride and Prejudice. It seems as if I’ve always loved it. Jane Austen’s work was my first experience of grown-up literature, and has supplied a lifetime of pleasure: it’s the only book that, as an adult, I re-read. Even after all these years, all those re-readings, and even after unpicking the backing to look at the underside—I still love it. I still admire it. And to inhabit it in this different way has been an unalloyed pleasure.
But there are other books, too, to which I am particularly indebted. Maggie Black’s A Taste of History and The Jane Austen Cookbook, edited by Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye, provided me with ideas for dinner; Charles Esdaile’s The Peninsular War, Robert Harvey’s The War of Wars, Richard Holmes’s Redcoat all supplied essential detail—both military and personal—for James’s experiences in Spain and Portugal. Jane Austen’s Letters, edited by Deirdre Le Faye, Carolyn Steedman’s Labours Lost: Domestic Service and the Making of Modern England, Amanda Vickery’s Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England, Andrew White’s Life in Georgian Lancaster, and Ben Wilson’s Decency and Disorder 1789–1837 offered invaluable insight into domestic and social life in this fascinating and unstable period.
And there are people to thank, as well as books. Daragh, for twisting my arm. Saleel, for keeping lookout. Diana, Jane and Marianne, for nudging me along. Clare, for staying put. And my mum and dad, for not thinking twice about letting me play out all day, when I was little, in the ramshackle outbuildings of a nearby Georgian house, where there was a big, echoing kitchen, a disused necessary house, and empty stables with a ladder at the back, which led up to the sunlit stable loft above.
A Note About the Author
Jo Baker was born in Lancashire, England, and educated at Oxford University and Queen’s University Belfast. She is the author of The Undertow and of three earlier novels published in the United Kingdom: Offcomer, The Mermaid’s Child, and The Telling. She lives in Lancaster.
Other titles by Jo Baker available in eBook format:
The Undertow • 978-0-307-95836-5
Visit: www.jobakerwriter.com
Like: www.facebook.com/jobakerauthor#!/jobakerwriter
For more information, please visit www.aaknopf.com
ALSO BY JO BAKER
The Undertow
The Telling
The Mermaid’s Child
Offcomer