Important Places In Pride And Prejudice And Jane Austen's Life -- Map

This document includes a list of places in the novel Pride and Prejudice, including both imaginary places and real places, and a list of important places in Jane Austen's life, as well as a map of England which shows pre-1971 county boundaries and illustrates both the lists.

See also the Diagram of the legal structure of the United Kingdom (for the 19th century, substitute "Ireland" for "Northern Ireland").

List of Places in the novel Pride and Prejudice

On the map a black dot is placed on the three counties in which most of the action of the novel occurs, and several other places in the novel were marked where there was room on the map

• Hertfordshire Imaginary places: Longbourn (residence of the Bennets), Netherfield Park (residence of the Bingleys), Lucas Lodge, the residence of the Lucases, and the village of Meryton, where the militia regiment is quartered for a time. Less important places in the vicinity are Oakham Mount (to which Darcy and Elizabeth walk on the morning after their éclaircissement), the memorably-named town of ---- (where the London coaches stop, and the George Inn is located), and the houses or estates of Ashworth, Haye-Park, Purvis Lodge, and Stoke (all of which Mrs. Bennet considers as possible residences for Lydia and Wickham).
• Derbyshire: Imaginary places: Pemberley (residence of Mr. Darcy) and the villages of Lambton (former residence of Mrs. Gardiner) and Kympton (where Wickham was to be the clergyman). Real places: Scenic and touristic locations in Derbyshire mentioned in connection with Elizabeth and the Gardiners' tour are Bakewell, Chatsworth, Matlock, Dove Dale, and the Peak.
  • On their itinerary from Hertfordshire to Derbyshire, they took in Blenheim (the estate of the Duke of Marlborough) and Oxford, in Oxfordshire; and Warwick, the famous ruined castle of Kenilworth, and the city of Birmingham, in Warwickshire.
• Kent: Real places: The black dot on Kent is placed in the approximate location of Westerham, in northwest Kent near London. Ramsgate is a sea-side resort, where Georgiana Darcy stayed for a summer. Imaginary places: Rosings (the residence of Lady Catherine) and Hunsford (where Mr. Collins is rector) are near Westerham.
• Sussex: Real places: On the southeast coast the town of Brighton is the fashionable sea-side resort, with a temporary military camp, where Lydia goes. In real life it was the hangout of the Prince Regent and his decadent coterie; in a letter of January 8th 1799 to Cassandra, Jane Austen wrote "I assure you that I dread the idea of going to Brighton as much as you do, but I am not without hopes that something may happen to prevent it". Eastbourne is another seaside town on the Sussex coast, to the east of Brighton.

• "Here I am once more in this scene of dissipation and vice, and I begin already to find my morals corrupted." -- Jane Austen, letter of August 1796

  London is not marked on the map, since there was no room to do so (it is southeastern Middlesex). The London area had over a million inhabitants (the first city in Europe to do so), and was several times larger than any other city in Britain; London was often associated, in the imagination of Jane Austen's day, with loose morals in both low life and high society -- a scene of fashionable dissipations and a dangerous example to the rest of the country (thus the opportunistic and amoral Lady Susan says "London will always be the fairest field of action, however my views may be directed"). Bromley is between Westerham and London, Epsom is on the southern-eastern approaches to London, and Clapham is a neighbourhood on the south side of the Thames (across from the `City' proper). Cheapside, where the Bingley sisters accuse Mr. Gardiner of living (he actually lives in Gracechurch Street, further east) is an unfashionably commercial neighbourhood in the `City', near St. Paul's. Grosvenor street, where Mr. Hurst and Louisa live, is in a much more fashionable neighborhood towards the West End. Barnet and Hatfield are coaching stations to the north of London, through which Lydia and Wickham would probably have passed if they had been going to Scotland.
• The Lake country (rugged, scenic, and with literary associations) is in the far northwest of England; and Newcastle (where Wickham is stationed after his marriage to Lydia) is in Northumberland in the northeast. Gretna Green, just over the Scottish border, was the Nevada of its day (taking advantage of the laxer Scottish marriage laws during the 1754-1856 period) -- quickie marriages, minors don't need parental permission, few questions asked. According to Caroline Norton, "Gretna" was "not... of itself a city sacred to Hymen, but the nearest village across the boundary of England, that could be reached by enamoured couples".

List of Important Places in Jane Austen's Life

• In Hampshire: Steventon (near Basingstoke) in which Jane Austen lived 1775-1801, and Chawton (near Alton) in which she lived 1809-1817, are represented by a single black dot in northwestern Hampshire ("HANTS" on the map). For other places in northwestern Hampshire connected with Jane Austen's relatives, see the Austen family genealogical charts. Winchester, where she died, is in central Hampshire. Southampton (where she briefly went to be taught in 1783, and lived 1808-1809), and Portsmouth (which plays a rôle in Mansfield Park and was important for her naval brothers), are both on the Hampshire coast. In light of the controversy over the public kiss in the recent movie version of Persuasion, here's a .gif image showing a couple in late 18th-century or early 19th-century Portsmouth osculating right out in the open on the street (gasp!) (be aware that this material isn't appropriate for those who would be shocked by shameless smooching, so that discretion is advised).
  • Go to "Hampshire is Jane Austen Country" (official county site)
• In Berkshire (to the north of Hampshire): Reading is where Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra went to boarding school in 1785-1786.
• In Gloucester/Somerset: Bath (marked on the map) was a health resort, retirement town, and provincial outpost of fashionable life; Jane Austen's parents were married there, she lived there 1801-1806, and her father is buried there. Bath had been fashionable with high society (Beau Nash and his dandies) earlier in the 18th century, but had become less so by Jane Austen's day. Bath is important in her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (and has a minor `off-stage' rôle in Mansfield Park), though it was not Jane Austen's favorite place to live in ("Bath is still Bath", as she wrote in a letter of November 6, 1813). Clifton, in which Jane Austen lived briefly in 1806, and which is the target of one of Catherine Morland's excursions in Northanger Abbey, is near Bristol, towards the coast northwest of Bath.
  • A rough map of Bath ca. 1800 is available.
  • A scan of a card with information about Bath in Jane Austen's life and novels is also available. (Large image in PNG format, which won't load into pre-1996 browsers and image viewer programs.)
• The seaside town of Lyme was visited by Jane Austen in 1803-1804, and plays a significant rôle in the novel Persuasion. Her possible tragically-ended early 1800's affair of the heart occurred along the Devonshire coast, west of Lyme.
  • Go to official (?) Lyme Regis page
• In Kent the estate of Godmersham was inherited by her brother Edward. The Austen family originally came from Kent.

Unfortunately, Kamchatka (referred to in her "Plan of a Novel") is slightly off the main map. In spite of lack of popular demand, I've therefore also included a map indicating the relative positions of Kamchatka and England.

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