As soon as we turned off the A3 and followed the signposts for Priors Dean, there was a hush. We could hear the car’s low hum as the road narrowed and the hazy, green cropland closed in behind us. The rustling of tree leaves ushered us uphill and around a corner. When a car came in our direction, Keith pulled off to the side so that it could pass.

This is East Hampshire, the district in England’s southeast where Jane Austen wrote the famous words, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” It is also where my boyfriend, Keith, was born.

Eighteenth-century ecologist Gilbert White made his home in East Hampshire.

While he has neither a fortune nor a pressing desire to marry, he did recently need a break from London.

So, we rented a simple Rover for a day and headed to East Hampshire. Our windows were rolled down and we had turned off the radio. Now the bleating of a lamb or the crackle of our tires rolling over fallen twigs were lonely interruptions.

Bordered by Surrey and West Sussex counties on the east and by the rest of Hampshire on the west, East Hampshire is comprised of several market towns and about 20 villages. While it is most famous for its literary history — Jane Austen and poet Edward Thomas hail from here — it is also home to noteworthy Roman archeological finds, steam-engine trains, working farms and reputable breweries.

As throughout much of the southwest, Romans inhabited East Hampshire villages between A.D. 43 and 410. After them, the Normans and Saxons lived here until the 1400s and 1500s. During this time, the area’s population grew and its markets were highly profitable.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Austen and ecologist Gilbert White lived and wrote industriously here. Within a hundred years, the Hampshire town Alton had gained respect in the growing brewing industry. “Alton Ale Shops” that sold beer and a sandwich for under a shilling reached as far as London.

By the early 1900s, writers Edward Thomas, one of Robert Frost’s close friends and contemporaries, and Flora Thompson, who wrote a highly regarded collection of essays on her country childhood, drew further attention to the area.

I thought about Thomas and the literary legacy here as Keith and I continued uphill. The signposts that we had been following were replaced with wooden arrows pointing right for Petersfield and left for Priors Dean. Thomas’ favorite drinking haunt, the White Horse Inn (known locally as the Pub With No Name, as there is no signage for it), was lost somewhere nearby among the wooded bluffs, slender beech trees and old, stout yews.

Thomas was deeply struck by his home’s beauty in the midst of an ever-encroaching and destructive modern world. In 1914 he wrote Up in the Wind, about the solitary Pub With No Name, and how its signboard was stolen and thrown into a pond. Keith turned left, saying that he’d never been here before. To the right, a rocky road led farther uphill to a private farmhouse and fields caressed by the long, slanted rays of the afternoon sun.

After driving haphazardly for an hour, signs for Petersfield, the closest town, appeared again. Keith suggested heading in that direction so that we could get a pint and stretch our legs. Once back on the main roads, the terrain was flatter, and reminders of modernity reappeared.

The houses are modest and suburban in character. Local pubs are ubiquitous, always within walking distance of homes. I knew that English actor Colin Firth had grown up in East Hampshire, and wondered if he had ever frequented these pubs as a teenager.