JASNA - Maps of the Novels

Where’s Where in Jane Austen’s Novels

The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.

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. Sense and Sensibility, her first published novel, 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.

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. This section reproduces 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. The maps include both real and fictional places, and the book provides information about more than 400 locations in Austen’s fiction. It is available for purchase on JASA’s web site. Jane Axelrod and Nadine Ezra, JASNA members in the New York Metropolitan Region, created the maps of London and Bath respectively.

The Jane Austen Society of North America

Where’s Where in Jane Austen’s Novels

Further Reading