Product Description

"You must drink tea with us tonight." Sense & Sensibility

Who would not want to sit down with Jane Austen and join her in a cup of tea? Here for the first time is a book that shares the secrets of one of her favorite rituals. Tea figures prominently in Jane Austen's life and work. In fact, the beloved novelist was the keeper and maker of tea in her family. Tea with Jane Austen begins with tea drinking in the morning and ends with tea in the evening, at balls and other gatherings.

Each chapter includes a description of how tea was taken at a particular place or time of day, along with history, recipes, excerpts from Austen's novels and letters and illustrations from the time. The book also reveals how to make a perfect cup of tea!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #90601 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 126 pages

From Booklist
Among Jane Austen's many attractions for the modern reader are the comfortable domestic details that furnish her novels, and what could be more comforting than tea? Tea was not just a beverage in Austen's time, but a key ingredient in social ritual, and her letters and novels are full of references to its buying, preparing, serving, and drinking. In this book, readers will find not only plenty of tea-related Austen quotes, but a well-researched history of Austen-era tea drinking at different times of day and in different settings. Recipes taken from contemporary cookbooks for old-fashioned delicacies such as orange jelly and syllabub are accompanied by modern adaptations. Austen purists may cringe at the emphasis on cozy charm, but there's definitely something appealing about settling down with a nice cup of Earl Grey, a Bath cake, and a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Perfect for Austen-reading book clubs. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
I was utterly charmed by the collection of so much information about tea in Jane Austen’s day. -- Bobbie Gay, JASNA News, Spring 2005

Kim Wilson has assembled a collection of anecdotes, quotations, verses and recipes, charmingly illustrated with engravings and line drawings. -- Jane Austen's Regency World, January, 2005

Ms. WIlson has an engaging sense of humor that shows itself continuously, but not uproariously. -- AustenBlog, www.austenblog.com, March, 2005

Review

Customer Reviews

Short and punchy book for tea drinkers and Janeites
This is a lovely short little book which will not only teach you how to make a good cup of tea but at the same time takes a lovely cultural walk through the historical significance of tea both in society and literature.

The Georgian era really saw the rise in tea as a social institution, which is of course the time of Austen. Kim Wilson manages to extract references to tea in novels and letters using them as examples of its importance at the time, and its use as a literary device.

this has a series of lovely recipes in it which are true to Austen's time, well as true as they can be. Ingredients and measurements not withstanding. But how wonderful to do tea just as Austen did.

This book is highly specialised around Tea and really Austen and perhaps the Jane Austen in the title was supposed to draw in more readers on the Jane Austen bandwagon. However I do think it has merit. Firstly it tended to stick with things of Austen's time and I felt it gave a fairly good discussion of what her life would have been.

It really suffered from lack of illustration, not only throughout the book, but also for the cooking items at the end. I recommend reading this with another illustrated book of Austen's life if you want to see more of the places and things mentioned in here. There is one excellent book I have read recently called Regency Design which (while not on Jane Austen) will illustrate so much of what they used, ate from, drank from and lived in. It is fully illustrated, I think the author is Morley - anyway - a book like that is an excellent accompaniment to lovely short books such as this.

Highly recommended
Before sitting down with this book, turn to the very last chapter, which explains how to make the perfect cup of tea -- and prepare a whole pot for yourself. Because once you begin reading Kim Wilson's engaging discussion, you'll want nothing so much as a good cup of tea (except, perhaps, a rout cake or Bath bun to go with it) but will not want to put the book down long enough to boil water. "Tea with Jane Austen" is like the best blends of the beverage, its individual components smoothly combining to create a delightful experience richer than the sum of its parts. Primarily a social history of tea in Georgian England, the book also explains how Austen and other authors use tea as a literary device, and includes period recipes with modern conversions. Though extensively researched, this is not dry history -- Wilson's warm, conversational style and gentle humor make the book as entertaining as it is informative. Indeed, the reader feels as if Wilson is our hostess rather than a lecturer as she educates us by turns on tea itself (how it was transported, sold, and prepared) and the social contexts in which it was enjoyed. She also enhances our appreciation for Austen's writings by revealing subtle cues Austen incorporates into tea-drinking scenes that likely escape most modern readers -- but that her contemporaries would have recognized as character-defining elements. Among the many fascinating insights Wilson offers, we learn why the Austens, hardly well-to-do, bought their tea only from one of London's most reputable merchants, that naval officers often brought along their own tea so as to improve conditions aboard ship by indulging in a small comfort of home, and the real reason Mr. Darcy drinks a cup of coffee rather than tea toward the end of "Pride and Prejudice." By the end of the book, you'll be trying to decide which of the intriguing recipes to attempt first, and which Jane Austen novel to read or reread whilst sipping tea (with sugar, but no cream) from a Wedgwood cup.

A disappointment
I would have been willing to pay more for this book, if only it had some color pictures in it, but it had not a single color photo. And pictures would have helped immensely. For instance, when the author mentions the Austens' Wedgwood set, I wish I could see an example of one. Or what did the fireplace and other equipment look like in Chawton cottage where Jane prepared breakfast each morning? The author mentions things like these but we're left wondering what it all looked like. There are small black and white illustrations throughout the book, but they don't complement the text at all; they're just there. In other places, the author seems to mislead the reader when she says Jane shopped at the finest shops in London. (She did sometimes, but as a spinster daughter of a deceased reverend, she rarely had much money to spend for nice clothes.) In another place the author actually mentions the naval vessels many officers sailed on, and seems to imply that sailing back then was a luxurious experience. (Hmm, Patrick O'Brian's portrayal of naval sea voyages, in approximately the same time period, was anything but luxurious... cramped quarters, bad food, and such extreme dangers for the men from disease, war, and the minimal physician skills that were available.)
After I was done reading the book, I reflected that I hadn't learned anything from it that I didn't already know from a good Jane Austen biography I'd read before.
Like many people, I love tea and I love Jane Austen, and so I ordered this book as soon as it came out and was eager to receive it. But as an Austen biography, it's way too scant on details, and as a tea book it screams for better illustrations. Take my advice and pass this one by.