Mrs Bates of Highbury: A prequel inspired by Jane Austen's 'Emma'.: 1 (The Highbury Trilogy)

Thirty years before the beginning of Emma Mrs Bates is entirely different from the elderly almost entirely silent figure familiar to fans of Jane Austens fourth novel. She is comparatively young and beautiful widowed - but ready to love again. She is the lynch-pin of Highbury society until the appalling Mrs Winwood arrives very determined to hold sway over that ordered little town.Miss Bates is as talkative aged twenty-nine as she is in her later iteration with a ghoulish fancy seeing disaster in every cloud. When young Mr Woodhouse arrives looking for a plot for his new house the two strike up a relationship characterised by their shared hypochondria personal chariness and horror of draughts.Jane the other Miss Bates is just seventeen and eager to leave the parochialism of Highbury behind her until handsome Lieutenant Weston comes home on furlough from the militia and sweeps her - quite literally - off her feet.