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
A Memoir of Jane Austen for whom Jane Austen is "nature-loving, religious, domestic, [and] middle class". The Godmersham or Kentish Austens viewed Jane Austen as more "inward and passionate...gentrified, improved willy-nilly by contact with her fine relations". Moreover, as Caroline wrote, "the generation who knew her is passing away". Much of the biography is based on the memories of those who had only known Jane Austen when they were children and she was their older aunt; the rest is based on written records passed down through the family. As Sutherland explains, "the major ingredients of the "Memoir", as well as its reverent colouring, are owed,