![]() Gretna Green was the first town over the Scottish border. “I am going to Gretna Green,” Lydia writes to her friend, “and if you cannot guess with who, I shall think you a simpleton.” Unlike England, Scotland allowed people under 21 to get married without parental consent, and without the same legal and religious bureaucracy. In the book, the Bennet family is almost ruined when Lydia elopes with the nefarious soldier George Wickham to Scotland. ![]() They were given free reign of their father and uncle’s extensive library, and were both encouraged to write. ![]() The two girls were sent to boarding school together, but returned after only a year as the family could not pay their tuition fees. She was one of eight children, and was extremely close with her only sister, Cassandra.At this time, the breaking of an engagement was scandalous, and caused a lot of tension between the families, and further tension between Austen and her mother. Despite her many romantic story lines, neither Austen nor her sister married – although she was engaged for a day to a wealthy family friend, Harris Bigg Wither.The novel made Austen little money as she sold the book outright rather than taking royalties – she was given £110, although the first run made the publisher more than four times that, and Austen never saw a penny of it. The novel was first finished in 1797 but was not published for another 16 years! Austen wrote it when she was 21 years old.Download these notes as a PDF Tidbits of Knowledge
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