Photos from Anne-Marie Edwards American Book Tour
Click on photo to view larger image

Anne-Marie Edwards at Canterbury Booksellers, Madison, Wisconsin. Photos by Brent Nicastro

First published in 1979 by BBC Books in England, In the Steps of Jane Austen remains the only comprehensive travel guide to Austen's England. Newly revised and updated by Edwards, its original author, the book is now published in the United States by Jones Books.

The guide is a detailed and engaging stroll through Austen's life and work and is arranged as a series of walking tours in the towns and countryside she knew and loved - the settings for her novels. Readers are introduced to the real-life people she met on her journeys, many of whom live on, thinly disguised, as the characters in her books. The country houses, churches, great estates and elegant cities she knew have changed surprisingly little in the course of two centuries.

Included are scenes from Jane Austen's novels such as Godmersham House, the inspiration for Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice; "Barton Cottage" from Sense and Sensibility; Lyme Regis's treacherous stone steps in Persuasion; Bath's Assembly Rooms in Northanger Abbey; and Southampton where Austen learned about naval life portrayed in her novels.

Well known to walkers in Great Britain through her books and programs on the BBC, Anne-Marie Edwards is the author of numerous travel guides exploring the English countryside. She contributed to The Jane Austen Companion and Walker's Britain and has written and broadcast programs on Austen and travelling in England for BBC radio and television. Edwards lives in Southampton, England, with her husband Michael Edwards, who took the photographs for this book.