Jane spent her teenage years in a grimy industrial town in Lancashire before studying English at London University. While teaching teenagers and adults she met a wide variety of people. She has lived in Manchester and Scotland and now lives in Oxfordshire. It is the characters who drive her to write. They often shock her by doing something totally unexpected. Now she is a widow, Jane has more time to research the historical background to her novels. Thornfield Hall is set in the 1830s when women had very limited opportunities. If Jane Eyre had studied the law she would not be quite so determined to marry Mr Rochester. In A Family Affair in the 1890s and the beginning of the twentieth century, the young women still wear corsets but they are serious about earning a living. Except Dorothea.