No money for a tour of Jane Austen sites in England? Worry not: a diligent Janeite named LuciaM has painstakingly created a Google Earth Layer (basically, a collection of placemarkers overlaid on a Google Earth map) keyed to Austen’s life and works.
From a bird’s-eye view or from human eye level, you can check out the addresses where Austen lived in Bath, the approximate location of the fictitious Mansfield Park, or the stately home that represented Pemberley in the famous 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. You can even take brief side expeditions to Antigua, the site of Sir Thomas Bertram’s West Indian holdings, or to Gibraltar and Haiti, two of Captain Wentworth’s ports of call.
All told, more than two hundred Austen-related places are represented, along with LuciaM’s mini-essays on their significance.
As far as I can tell, LuciaM finished her work long ago – back in 2009, it seems – but it’s new to me, and yet another example of how technology can simultaneously shrink the globe and expand Janeite community.
Comments