The question at the outset of this book concerns the picture that emerges when reading Jane Austen's fiction from the perspective of a civilization in process. Albeit invested in the ways in which men and women, children and adults, navigate civil society, this is not another study about Austen the archetypal author of good manners. While moral development is at the heart of this book, it has been my care to avoid what one scholar has recently lamented ‘books that perpetuate the view of Austen as a moral tutor, a sort of Miss Manners for the ages’ do, namely, purport an understanding of ‘manners as monolithic – as near-universal and timeless behavioural ideas or, worse still, a set of rules to be followed’. This is not to say that such books offer no valuable insights, but that the present study seeks to delve into the implications of Austen's awareness of what Norbert Elias has christened ‘the civilizing process’ that underlies individuation and social manners.