Amanda Vickery

Today Jane Austen is regarded as one of the greats of English literature. But it was not always so. Amanda Vickery describes the changing nature of Austen’s reception in the two centuries since her birth.

A revolution in sociability took place among the genteel and ‘middling’ classes of 18th-century England, as visiting friends of similar social status became a leisure pursuit in itself, especially among women,writes Amanda Vickery.