Will I love Old Times?

Partly as a result of one of my numerous misguided educational choices and partly out of genuine interest, I did a lot of work in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century English literature. I wish I’d had Ashton’s book, as it’s a social history of England back then and a basic anthology of what was being reported at the time, with dozens of reproductions of drawings. 

Jane Austen is a favorite novelist of mine, and when you look at the section on women’s fashions, it definitely changes how you see her women—and how the men saw them. 

At the same time,… show more.