To coincide with the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth in 2025, this addition to FL's 'Worlds of' series, picking up on the themes and legacy behind one of the worlds most popular writers.Despite the tranquil, even cosy, image of Austen and her work that still lingers in the popular imagination, her life in fact coincided with a period of intense, immense change, what is still sometimes called the Age of Revolutions. The American Revolutionary War began the year of her birth. By her eighth birthday, Britain had been forced to formally recognise the existence of the United States. The French Revolution broke out in 1789, when she was thirteen, and came close to home: her cousin Eliza's French husband died under the guillotine. When she was 22, there was an uprising in Ireland. All through Austen's teenage years and her early adulthood, the old certainties were being subjected to challenge, new ideas were springing up - about democracy and freedom, about slavery, about poetry, abo
