I just had to borrow this one when I saw it because I love Jane Austen and tea (as evidenced by the fact that I went to the Jane Austen Center in Bath and bought their tea). Tea with Jane Austen is about tea (and food) in Jane Austen’s time, which is quite focused compared to other books about Jane Austen and that time period.

Tea With Jane Austen is broken into six parts:

1. Tea in the morning: This is about how people drank tea in the morning, but really more about when they ate and what they ate. But one thing I learned was that tea was considered very expensive and that’s why the women of the house (not the servants) were personally responsible for making tea. In fact, when they weren’t using the tea, it was locked away in a tea caddy!

2. Tea and Shopping: This was on how people bought tea and why there was an illegal tea trade. I’ve been reading up on tea fraud these past few weeks and what I found was pretty scary, but this book made me glad that I’m not living in Austen’s era! The tea fraud seems to be much worse there because apart from people selling used tea leaves, there’s something called “smouch”, which is fake tea “made with ash tree leaves that were dried, baked, “trod upon until the leaves are small, then lifted and steeped in copperas, with sheep’s dung, after which, being dried on a floor, they are fit for use.”” I’m glad that most of the fraud nowadays is origin-fraud (i.e. passing tea from one place off as tea from another place), although more serious health-harming fraud also occurs.

3. Tea away from home: This was on how people took their tea when they weren’t at home. This covered whether soldiers and sailors drank tea, tea parlors, and tea during picnics.

4. Tea and Health: Quite a lot of people drink tea for its health benefits, but tea wasn’t always seen to be beneficial. During its early years, there was quite a lot of opposition to tea from brewers, and “one particularly indignant fellow wrote a furious letter to Gentleman’s Magazine, claiming tea caused feebleness, cowardice, poor blood, barren women, and dissatisfied servants.” Very different from how we see tea nowadays!

This chapter also covered the reasons drank tea, from it being the only thing heroines in distressed drink, to being something that also nourished the sick in Austen’s time.

5. Tea in the Evening: Like the Tea in the Morning chapter, this chapter is concerned more with how people spent their evening and nights, and the role of tea wasn’t as big as in the other chapters. It was, however, interesting to read about how “tea was invariably served at the more splendid evening entertainments, whether they were public affairs such as concerts or assemblies (public dancers), or private balls.” Looks like tea was also a sort of status symbol, which is no wonder given its high price!

Each chapter also comes with a couple of recipes. The original is given, and then a recipe for modern day cooks follows so that you can make it without having to time travel.

Overall, this was a short and fascinating book. If you’re a fan of Jane Austen, you definitely have to read this – preferably while sipping on a cup of tea.