Georgian society in Jane Austen's novels as it started in 1760, just before her parents married in 1764, and ended up in 1820, after the death of Austen in 1817 and the posthumous publication of her two novels, "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey" in 1818. It is through her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, married to a French aristocrat, that Jane Austen first heard of the French Revolution and of its violence. Eliza stayed in England in 1786 and 1787, and made several trips between France and England from 1788 to 1792. In January 1791, Eliza was in Margate, and was hoping that her husband, who had just
Jane Austen realism, a realism in which each conversation and gesture carries a weight of significance. The narrative style utilises free indirect speech – she was the first English novelist to do so extensively – through which she had the ability to present a character's thoughts directly to the reader and yet still retain narrative control. The style allows an author to vary discourse between the narrator's voice and values and those of the characters. Austen had a natural ear for speech and dialogue, according to scholar Mary Lascelles "Few novelists can be more scrupulous than Jane Austen as to the phrasing