Petty France, Gloucestershire a result of this the speed through the two hamlets was reduced to 40 MPH. Badminton and Hawkesbury Upton are also nearby. The Manor House in Petty France was built in 1812 for Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, prime minister from 1812 to 1827. The house has seen the likes of Lord Wellington, and has been in the ownership of the poet Wordsworth's family, Lord and Lady Apsley and the Duke of Beaufort; today it is a hotel. In her novel Northanger Abbey (written in 1803, but not published until 1817), Jane Austen mentions Petty France as a dull
Belinda (Edgeworth novel) to this society novel's spirited heroine. Certainly when Austen was updating her early novel-draft 'Susan', which eventually appeared in print renamed as "Northanger Abbey", she added a reference to "Belinda":" 'Oh, it is only a novel...It is only "Cecilia" or "Camilla", or "Belinda" '; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed". "Belinda" was itself in the tradition of society novels by writers such as Frances Sheridan and Frances Burney, who also charted the travails of bright young women in search of a good marriage. Perhaps Edgeworth's best courtship novel, "Belinda" replaces