Mr. Gibson had no relations, no family connections, to bring to the proposed union, but that deficiency was more than made up by the hearty approbation of his many friends. And let no one attempt to describe the satisfaction of Mrs. Butters, in anticipating the fulfilment of her plans.
Author’s Note
As A Marriage of Attachment concludes, Edmund has resumed life with Mary, Commander William Price has won his bride, and Fanny and William Gibson look forward to a happy life together. Please stay tuned—there will be more twists and turns!
May I ask, if you enjoyed reading this book, would you kindly leave a rating and review at Amazon or Goodreads? Thank you so much, it means a great deal.
About the Author
Lona Manning loves reading, choral singing, gardening, and travel. Over the years, she has been a home care aide, legal secretary, political speech writer, office manager, vocational instructor, non-profit manager and English as a Second Language teacher. She was born in Seoul, South Korea, where her parents were educational missionaries after the Korean War. In addition to her works of fiction, she has written true crime articles for www.CrimeMagazine.com. Visit her website at www.lonamanning.ca for updates about forthcoming publications.
Connect with Lona Manning:
www.lonamanning.ca
Goodreads Author page
Amazon author page
Acknowledgements
A big thank-you to my editors, proof-readers, and beta readers: Anji Dale, Cara Elrod, Sandra Fillmer, Joseph Manning, Susan Meikle, Lenora Robinson, and several more who chose not to share their names. Your contributions made a big difference.
I am very grateful to my fellow authors Mark Brownlow, Callista Hunter, and A.E. Walnofer for their insightful comments and warm support. I hope we can continue writing and sharing the journey.
In the days since my first novel, A Contrary Wind, was published, I have made new friends, such as author Kyra Kramer, who joined me in the online “Fanny vs Mary” debates, and received wonderful support from some old friends, such as Pam Penner and Peter Geoffrey Cassey.
Getting to know the international Jane Austen-loving community has brought me great pleasure and many new friends. I received a very kind reception from the online Janeite world, even though my heroine is Fanny Price!
I owe a great debt to Claudine Pepe of JustJane1813.com for her early encouragement and support.
Thank you to Christina Angel Boyd, editor and publicist extraordinaire, for inviting me to contribute to three Jane Austen short-story anthologies, Dangerous to Know, Rational Creatures, and Yuletide.
My thanks go to Tim Barber of Dissect Designs (www.dissectdesigns.com) for creating the book covers for both books. I’m looking forward to working on the next one!
Background Information
Jane Austen lived during a fascinating and important turning point in history, an era that linked the Age of Enlightenment, with its great thinkers like John Locke and Adam Smith, with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution and the Romantic Age. On the one hand, she grew up reading and loving the measured, balanced phrases of Dr. Johnson and she imbibed the values of restraint, courtesy, and moderation, as embodied in her heroine Elinor Dashwood. But the new century also brought poets like Wordsworth, gothic novels, a fascination with the Orient and wildly sentimental novels, all of which are enjoyed by her heroines Marianne Dashwood and Catherine Moreland.
The Enlightenment brought some religious toleration to England; people were no longer being burnt alive as witches and heretics but it was still a very poor career move to declare oneself to be an atheist.
In addition, British attitudes about rank, the merchant class and society, were being challenged at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The life of the English farm labourer and peasant was upended when common lands were fenced in for farming and grazing. The rural poor were no longer able to turn their pigs out to graze in the forest or their cow to graze on common land. Poaching wild game in the forest was a capital crime. Many poor people migrated to the cities to compete for jobs in the factories. They became wage slaves, cogs in an industrial machine. Child labour, massive social upheaval, pollution, and “dark satanic mills,” completes the picture of misery and exploitation that we associate with the Industrial Revolution.
However, the Industrial Revolution soon brought a skyrocketing improvement in living standards as well as the development of public health, law and order, public charity and a decrease in child mortality. As economist Gregory Clark wrote: “Jane Austen may have written about refined conversations over tea served in china cups. But for the majority of the English as late as 1813 conditions were no better than for their naked ancestors of the African savannah. The Darcys were few, the poor plentiful.”
You can see a graph at this link http://bit.ly/2DFnRwX which shows the undeniable fact that the Industrial Revolution was unique in the history of mankind.
And while wages rose, the cost of every day necessities fell, over time. Take the cost of candles for light, for example. HumanProgress.org notes that: “The amount of labor that once bought 54 minutes of light now buys 52 years of light.” Candles today are used for decoration and, as a gift, are easily re-giftable. But Julia Bertram was being truly thoughtful when she generously brought a box of nice beeswax candles for Mrs. Price.
Lord Delingpole was on the right side of history. But of course poor and dispossessed unskilled farm labourers and workers needed charity and many people were involved in providing it. The Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor—known as The Bettering Society for short—really existed and their annual reports are available on Google Books. (There is no article
