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  • Longbourn

  • Written by: Jo Baker
  • Narrated by: Emma Fielding
  • Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (26 ratings)

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Longbourn

Written by: Jo Baker
Narrated by: Emma Fielding
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Publisher's Summary

Pride and Prejudice was only half the story

If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.

In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic - into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars - and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.

©2013 Jo Baker (P)2013 Random House Audio

What the critics say

"A triumph: a splendid tribute to Austen’s original but, more importantly, a joy in its own right, a novel that contrives both to provoke the intellect and, ultimately, to stop the heart.... Like Austen, Baker has written an intoxicating love story but, also like Austen, the pleasure of her novel lies in its wit and fierce intelligence.... Baker not only creates a richly imagined story of her own but recasts Austen’s novel in a startlingly fresh light.... Inspired." (The Guardian)

What listeners say about Longbourn

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Enjoyed this look at another time and other lives.

One of those books that are easy to relate to for those of us old enough to have had family who were in service. Reading this brought home the dispart lives of servants and their "betters". Young girls without families entered into service with no prospects other than hard work. In this book they do form a sort of family with all that that entails, their hopes and dreams no different from those upstairs. The narration added to the enjoyment of the book.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Where has this book been hiding?

The genre was right up my alley. It exceeded my expectations. I loved it all, the story was captivating and the narration was excellent. Thank you audible, I have fallen down another rabbit hole of amazing storytelling and want to read so much more from Jo Baker!

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Loved this book!

I absolutely loved this book. The prose is rich, the story is engrossing and the narrator is perfect.

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