Who owns, who buys, who gives, and who notices objects is always significant in Austen's writing, placing characters socially and characterizing them symbolically. Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions looks at the significance of objects in Austen's major novels, fragments, and juvenilia.
The search of data and incidents, relating to the Armistead family, has necessitated a great deal of reading, besides literal digging into the records of various counties and the Land Office, disciphering old tombstones, and visiting the sites of old homes and original grants. The drudgery, the weariness of it all, is forgotten, but the charm and romance of those early days linger with us, like some tender, bewitching dream, that we would fane keep fresh in the memory of those of the family, who may not have the same opportunity for the study of Virginia's Colonial history. -- Foreword.