On a sunny September morning more than a century ago, a horse and buggy bearing two sisters wound its way past green pastures and wooded hills to the narrow streets of a Hampshire village. Constance and Ellen Hill, a pair of passionate admirers of Jane Austen, sat prepared to take the first steps in retracing the life of their idol. This charmingly written and illustrated account of their literary pilgrimage begins in Steventon, Jane Austen's birthplace, and extends to Bath, Lyme, Southampton, London, and elsewhere before concluding at the author's burial place in Winchester Cathedral. Along the way, it offers insights into the connections between the author's experiences and those of the characters in her novels.
Constance and Ellen Hill were given access to manuscripts of Austen's letters, unpublished family memoirs, and notebooks containing the "Minor Works," as well as the loan of family portraits, pictures, and contemporary sketches. Their fascinating glimpse of Austen's world, originally published in 1902, abounds in the same enthusiasm that draws Janeites to the author. "The more intimate their knowledge of her character becomes," the Preface promises readers, "the more must they admire and love her rare spirit."