Godmersham Park, novel by Gill Hornby (review)
This is the second novel I have read this year about Jane Austen. The other one was Stephanie Barron's Jane and the Year Without a Summer, which I reviewed previously, and it is tempting to compare the two books, but I am not going to say that one is better than the other. They are very different, and both are excellent in many ways. While Jane and the Year Without a Summer is a murder-mystery, set in 1816, Godmersham Park is set in 1804, when Jane Austen was aged only twenty-nine, and is concerned with less sensational events. The story is closely based on truth, the details being taken from the diary of Jane's niece Fanny Austen-Knight, daughter of Jane's brother Edward who owned the handsome estate of Godmersham Park in Kent. Fanny records how in January 1804, when she was aged thirteen, she got a new governess called Miss Anne Sharp. She rapidly became very fond of Miss Sharp, and when her Aunt Jane arrived to stay, she too soon became friends with the go