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Book review
Jane Austen and Lyme Regis

by Maggie Lane

Published by The Jane Austen Society, 2003

The delightful thing about reading anything by Maggie Lane is that she both talks to you and informs you. There is that sense in reading any of her works that you are actually having a conversation with her, and especially when she is writing about Jane Austen. At the same time, you know that this ‘conversation’ is with someone who has absorbed and evaluated so much surrounding Austen, her life and her novels that it is a privilege to be a part of the conversation.

Lane touches on that recognition that people have when they visit places inhabited at some point by a favourite author or by that author’s characters. I remember a JASA conference where Penny Gay, with some satisfaction, spoke about finding ‘the gravel walk’ in Bath. I recall a determination to visit Lyme Regis on my first visit to England, and indeed on subsequent visits, and the excitement that this place, which had existed in my imagination for so long, elicited as I walked along the Cobb.

Lyme Regis has a long and interesting history before Jane Austen and since her time has obviously undergone many changes also. How do you read Lyme Regis? It is a town that has been shaped by many forces and reshaped many times. Thus, it is an apt place for the setting of The French Lieutenant’s Woman. And it is to John Fowles that Lane turns for many of the historical details she gives about Lyme.

Previous works on Lyme Regis exist, then. Apart from Fowles, Emma Austen Leigh produced a small work (58 pages) in the early 1940s to go with her Jane Austen & Steventon and Jane Austen & Bath. Throughout the 19th Century, particularly as interest in Jane Austen’s works grew, the subject of her association with Lyme was the topic of journal articles. The connection with Edward II, the history of the building (and rebuilding) of the Cobb, the effect of the development of the Englishman’s holiday at the seaside and the life of Mary Anning, are all issues dealt with. Early guides deal more with the surrounding towns rather than with Lyme but since the end of the 19th Century, the great interest has been with Jane Austen’s visits to Lyme and its significance in Persuasion.

Lane draws together the history of Lyme, the letters of Jane Austen and the use Austen made of this setting in her last novel. She gives with clarity details which would assist the traveller walking around Lyme and absorbing the surroundings, at the same time pointing out some of the myths and uncertainties which have grown up around author and place. In what inn did the party from Uppercross stay? Lane gives the history of the rebuilding of the Three Cups, demonstrating that the inn that Austen knew (but had not actually stayed in) burnt down in 1844 and was rebuilt on the other side of the street. The Assembly rooms, which Jane Austen mentions in her letters, also are no more. They have been replaced, unfortunately, with a car park, but Lane gives the reader a strong feeling of what the rooms and their location would have been like. The Cobb itself is not as Jane Austen would have known it. Unfortunately this rules out Granny’s Teeth as the steps from which Louisa Musgrove fell. And Captain Harville probably did not live in that pretty pink house. 

Maggie Lane also deals with the description of Lyme given in Persuasion. It is Lane’s belief, along with others, that this section of the novel may have been rewritten if Austen’s health had allowed. It does not sit seamlessly in the novel.

Nevertheless, Lane’s observations of Lyme connect strongly with the real life of an author and the place that it has in her imagination and her art. Jane Austen and Lyme Regis conveys Lane’s sense of satisfaction in introducing Lyme Regis to readers and allows readers to connect Austen with a world that we can still observe today.

Pamela Nutt

03 February 2004

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