The Capital Times, Editorial
Friday, March 28, 2003
By Heather Lee Schroeder
English Author Takes Readers For Walk With Jane Austen

According to author Anne-Marie Edwards, there's only one way to really get to know Jane Austen's England.
She believes you've got to walk in the famous writer's footsteps, over hill and dale, past hedgerows and country estates. In your wanderings, you'll find echoes of Austen's England, her inspiration and her life. "You just can't drive it. You just wouldn't find all these treasures, "Edwards, a former English teacher, said in a recent telephone interview from her home in England.

Since it was published in 1970, Edwards' popular walking guide, "In the Steps of Jane Austen: Walking Tours of Austen's England," has never been out of print in Great Britain. Yet it wasn't available in the United States. That changed this month when the book was published as Madison-based Jones Books' debut offering.

The revised and updated edition includes scenes from Austen's novels and introduces many of the real-life people whom Austen thinly disguised in her books.

"I always loved Jane Austen's novels, but I never knew her as a person," she explained of her desire to write "In the Steps." "I thought it would be exciting and rewarding to see what she saw, to read her letters and see what she was thinking."

Indeed, this desire to understand Austen as a woman and a writer informs Edwards' writing, and makes the guide an interesting read even if one isn't traveling to England. In fact, with its lively writing and interesting segues into Austen's letters, "In the Steps" reads more like a hands-on biography than a guide.

Edwards said she's constantly trying to get her message about walking out to people.

"Walking is just wonderful," she said. "Everybody can do it. It doesn't require any great expense. It expands the soul."
And then as if to make sure she would appeal to fitness-crazy American readers, Edwards added mischievously, "There's the health side of things too."

When she first started writing walking guides, Edwards was sick all the time with pneumonia and bronchitis. When she began walking regularly, her health improved.

Today she pronounces herself "fit as a flea," and says she walks miles every day. At 70 years old, that's not bad. In the Steps of Jane Austen By Anne-Marie Edwards Jones Books 188 pages, $19.95

Anne-Marie Edwards will read from her book at 4 p.m. Friday, April 4, at Canterbury Booksellers, 315 W. Gorham St.