A Modern Quest for Knowledge into a Past World of Literature;
or ... Why did Jane Austen write her Famous Strawberry Party Scene?
Ch4/46: The Times
For my searches in the Times I used the 17th and 18th Century Burney Newspapers Collection. It has the drawback that it does not contain any issues of the Times after 1800.
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Compared to the British Newspaper Archive (BNA), pdf files downloaded from the Burney Newspaper Collection are searchable using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, which is a major help.
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As it is very time consuming to add examples of the various advertisements, this work will not be carried out as such for other newspapers than the Bath newspapers and the Hampshire Chronicle, unless the example shows something remarkable.
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At the bottom of this web page please find an overview of the hits found while searching the Times.
The Results
There are thirty-one hits and, in contrast to the other papers which I have looked at, the Times does not have any hits relating to horses nor are there any concerning entertainment or the consumption of strawberries!
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The searches reveal nineteen hits concerning advertisements for nurseries or cultivation of fruit, and the remaining twelve have references to addresses at Strawberry Hill.
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I conclude that Jane Austen was probably not inspired by any of the results found when searching the Times.