'I did not intend to start a riot,' says Elizabeth Darcy, at the start of my book Crime and Prejudice. Of course she didn't; she was agitating for women's education. Why shouldn't women like Elizabeth Darcy, Mary Anning the geologist, and Charles Darwin's cousin Caroline Wedgewood, be allowed to go to Cambridge University?

Undergraduate students at Cambridge each belong to a college, where they sleep, have meals and sometimes discuss their work with a specialist in their subject. There were no women's colleges at Cambridge in Jane Austen's time. The first, Girton, was founded in 1869; the second, Newnham, was founded in 1871. The third, New Hall, was not founded till 1954. Women were allowed to attend some lectures at Cambridge in the 1870s, and to sit for exams from 1881. In 1880, women presented a petition demanding the right to receive a degree, but it took another 17 years for a vote to be held, and the result was disastrous.

"Are you looking at me?" 

It didn't take much for a gentleman's honour to be challenged in Regency England, and once offended, the parties often resorted to a duel. Duelling in the UK was outlawed in 1819, but duels continued to be fought until 1852. The favoured weapons were pistols or swords. In theory, killing someone in a duel was counted as murder, and the winner was liable to the death penalty. In practice, a lot of leniency was upheld in sentencing.