Jane Austen
by Beth Palmer

While Jane Austen is often associated with Chawton in Hampshire, the novelist spent substantial time in Surrey and used it as the setting for two of her novels.

As unmarried women, Jane and her sister Cassandra, often relied on the hospitality of their extended family and travelled frequently around the South of England paying visits and helping when pregnancy or illness meant their brothers’ families needed assistance. Even whilst living in Chawton, Jane would frequently travel through Surrey for visits to family in London and Kent. In particular, she made visits to the village of Great Bookham, just outside Dorking, to stay with their mother’s cousin Mrs Samuel Cooke and her husband, the vicar of the local church.

In the summer of 1814 Jane stayed with the Cookes for a fortnight and it is highly likely that she used this period as inspiration for Emma (1815). Great Bookham sits almost in the shadow of Box Hill, and Jane must surely have climbed it during her stay. The famous picnic scene in Emma, of course, takes place on Box Hill and has been immortalised in several television and film adaptations. In it, Emma flirts with the callous Frank Churchill and insults her old friend Miss Bates, causing Mr Knightley to upbraid her. But, of course, these difficulties are just the preliminaries to a happy ending for Emma. The majority of the action in Emma is set in Highbury, a fictional village in Surrey, and readers have often speculated about whether Highbury might be a version of Leatherhead, Cobham, or Esher. In any case, it is clear that Austen knew the geography of the region and used it to structure key episodes of one of her best loved novels.  

An unfinished novel, The Watsons (written during 1804 but abandoned, most likely due to her father’s death), is also set in Surrey, in another fictional village named Stanton. In it, references are made to the towns of ‘D---’ and ‘R---’, presumably Dorking and Reigate. Emma may be a highly imperfect heroine, but many of the characters in The Watsons are quarrelsome and self-serving. With four sisters on the marriage market and their clergyman father unable to provide for them after his death, the plot is reminiscent of Pride and Prejudice, and has inspired numerous authors to offer their own completions.

One further Surrey connection is that the nearby village of Westhumble was the home of the novelist Frances Burney, much admired by Austen. Although it is not known if the two women met, their lives overlapped and Austen’s work was influenced by the fiction of her predecessor.  

For further information see

Deirdre Le Faye,  Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels.  London: Lincoln, 2003

Surrey Heritage: Jane Austen in Surrey

Image reproduced through creative commons. From a watercolour by James Andrews of Maidenhead based on an unfinished work by Cassandra Austen in A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew J. E. Austen-Leigh. London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1870.