Jane Austen loved to put on her satin slippers with shoe-roses her white gloves & muslin gown & go off for an evening of fun at the Basingstoke assemblies. The Bennet girls share their creators delight & go off joyfully to dance & of course to meet future husbands. Drawing on contemporary accounts & illustrations & a close reading of the novels as well as Austens correspondence Susannah Fullerton takes the reader through all the stages of a Regency Ball as Jane Austen & her characters would have known it. Her subjects learn their steps dress in readiness find transport to convey them to a ball choose between public & private balls worry over a shortage of men prefer a cotillion to a quadrille talk & flirt with their partners sustain themselves with supper fall in love & then go home to talk it all over at the end.