Maps of the Novels

A defining characteristic of Jane Austen’s fiction is its realism, which is manifest in details of speech, manner, lifestyle, and even geography.

In each novel her “3 or 4 Families in a Country Village” are situated in a specific part of England. Austen always names the county in which a novel’s action is set and often mentions cities and landmarks, though her villages and estates are invented. 

She also uses geography to make a point about her characters. For example, Sense and Sensibility begins, “The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.” Austen uses the removal of the Dashwood women from Norland Park in Sussex to Barton Cottage in distant Devonshire to underscore both their exile from a cherished home and their displacement from an established social position to a modest life among strangers.

Sense and Sensibility

Map of Sense and Sensibility

• “Within Four Miles Northward of Exeter”: Landscapes of the Mind and Map in Sense and Sensibility, by Hazel Jones. Persuasions On-Line 43.1 (2022).

• Sunday in the Park with Elinor Dashwood: “So Public a Place”, by Laurie Kaplan. Persuasions 34 (2012): 179-200.
• Sense and Sensibility: 3 or 4 Country Families in an Urban Village, by Laurie Kaplan. Persuasions 32 (2010). 

Pride and Prejudice

Map of Pride and Prejudice

• Meryton Identified, by Jamie Everitt. Persuasions On-Line 42.1 (2021).

• Derbyshire Great Houses and Pemberley, by John Wiltshire. Persuasions On-Line 42.1 (2021).

• The “Northern Tour” in Pride and Prejudice: Another Model, by James E. Evans. Persuasions 38 (2016).
• Where’s Wickham?, by Sue Forgue. Persuasions On-Line 36.1 (2015).
• How Celebrity Name-Dropping Leads to Another Model for Pemberley, by Janine Barchas. Persuasions 35 (2013).
• Bingley’s Four or Five Thousand, and Other Fortunes from the North, by Linda Slothouber. Persuasions 35 (2013).
• Pemberley’s Welcome, or An Historical Conjecture Upon Elizabeth Darcy’s Wedding Journey, by Kelly McDonald. Persuasions On-Line 30.1 (2009).
• Derbyshires Corresponding: Elizabeth Bennet and the Austen Tour of 1833, by Kelly McDonald. Persuasions 30 (2008).
• The Probable Location of Longbourn in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, by Kenneth Smith. Persuasions 27 (2005).
• Pemberley Revisited, by Donald Greene. Persuasions 1 (1979). 

Mansfield Park

Map of Mansfield Park

• “Delighted with the Portsmouth Scene”:  Why Austen’s Intimates Admired Mansfield Park’s Gritty City, by Christina Denny. Persuasions On-Line 35.1 (2014).
• Mansfield Park vs. Sotherton Court: Social Status and the Slave Trade, by Sarah Parry. Persuasions On-Line 35.1 (2014).
• The Rushworths of Wimpole Street, by Laurie Kaplan. Persuasions 33 (2011).
• The Estate at Sotherton, by Jenny Simons.  JASA Chronicle (June 2010), 16-18.
• Exploring Mansfield Park: In the Footsteps of Fanny Price, by John Wiltshire. Persuasions 28 (2006).
• Portsmouth in Jane Austen’s Time by B. C. Thomas. Persuasions 10 (1990).

Emma

Map of Emma

Hypothetical Map of Highbury

• The Probable Location of Donwell Abbey in Jane Austen’s Emma, by Kennth Smith. Persuasions On-Line 39.1 (2018).
• A Hypothetical Map of Highbury, by Penny Gay. Persuasions On-Line 36.1 (2015).
• Austen Writing Bristol: The City and Signification in Northanger Abbey and Emma, by Gillian Ballinger. Persuasions On-Line 36.1 (2015).
• Emma and “the children in Brunswick Square”, by Laurie Kaplan. Persuasions 31 (2009).
• “It Must Be Done in London”: The Suburbanization of Highbury, by Tara Ghoshal Wallace. Persuasions 29 (2007).
• Adoring the Girl Next Door: Geography in Austen’s Novels, by Susan Morgan. Persuasions On-Line 21.1 (2000). 

Northanger Abbey

Map of Northanger Abbey

• Austen Writing Bristol: The City and Signification in Northanger Abbey and Emma, by Gillian Ballinger. Persuasions On-Line 36.1 (2015).
• The Real Bluebeard of Bath:  A Historical Model for Northanger Abbey, by Janine Barchas. Persuasions 32 (2010).
• Yes, There is a Petty France, by Dean Cantrell. Persuasions 9 (1987).
• Blaise Castle, by Maggie Lane. Persuasions 7 (1985).

Persuasion

Map of Persuasion

Map of Bath  (Persuasion sites darkened on map.)

• The “Positioning Systems” of Persuasion, by Laura Mooneyham White. Persuasions On-Line 27.1 (2006).
• “The unmeaning luxuries of Bath”: Urban Pleasures in Jane Austen’s World, by Paula Byrne. Persuasions 26 (2004).
• Austen’s Urban Redemption: Rejecting Richardson’s View of the City, by Celia Easton. Persuasions 26 (2004).
• Why Lyme Regis?, by Peter Graham. Persuasions 26 (2004).
• “What Part of Bath Do You Think They Will Settle In?”:  Jane Austen’s Use of Bath in Persuasion, by Keiko Parker. Persuasions 23 (2001).

Jane Austen's London

Map of Jane Austen's London

Key to Map of Jane Austen's London

• London as Text: Teaching Jane Austen’s “London” Novels In Situ, by Laurie Kaplan. Persuasions On-Line 32.1 (2011). 

Other Maps and Articles

Map of English Counties

• Austen’s Bath and Bath’s Jane:  Austen Writing the City and Its Twenty-first-century Marketing of Heritage Jane, by Gill Ballinger. Persuasions On-Line 34.1 (2013).

Map Credits:
• Maps of the novels from Where’s Where in Jane Austen . . . and What Happens There, by Patrick Wilson, published by the Jane Austen Society of Australia.
• Hypothetical Map of Highbury created by Penny Gay, published in Persuasions On-Line 36.1, (Winter 2015).
• Map of London created by Jane Axelrod, JASNA-New York Metropolitan Region member.