Behind the Quill: The Research

When it comes to researching Jane Austen, there are a lot of directions people take. Some focus on clothing, food, or the lifestyle of the military and naval officers of the time. And while I’ve certainly dabbled in those areas too—how could you not, really?—that’s never been my main focus.

What draws me most to Austen is her realism. Yes, it’s still fiction, and sure, it often leaves out the gritty realities like dodging horse dung on your way to a ball—but at its heart, Austen’s work is psychologically grounded in a way that few others of her time (or even now) manage. Her characters feel real. They think and act like real people.

In fact, one of the things I find most impressive is how her characters can be analyzed using modern psychology—even diagnosed with neurodivergences—despite the fact that psychology as we know it didn’t exist until over a century after her death. All her insight came from careful observation and an extraordinary understanding of human nature, despite her relatively limited social circle.

What fascinates me is not just that she understood people, but that she knew how to take character archetypes and rework them into entirely new individuals simply by adjusting key aspects of their lives. I’ve written before about what I call the trifecta: wealth, education, and status, combined with nature vs. nurture, and how these elements shape every connection in her stories.

That’s what I wanted more of when I began writing my own Austenverse—more of that character-driven, psychologically insightful realism. So while I’ve done my share of scattered research across many topics, my deepest focus has always been Austen herself: her life, her letters, and especially her novels.

Because Jane Austen’s work is, as I like to call it, literary lasagna—layered with clues, implications, and hidden character arcs that most readers miss. A huge part of my research process has been simply re-reading and dissecting those layers: teasing out implications, cross-referencing hints, and piecing together the unseen parts of the story.

Of course, my research has also extended into areas like constructing a unified timeline, deciding when to place each novel, tracing family trees across her works, finding possible locations for the stories, and creating character and estate profiles—which are what I'll be discussing in this series of posts.

Next in the series: Timelines