] I had the impression from JA novels and Georgette Heyer books that the average bride was much, much younger! I would have guessed the average bride was around nineteen or so....did you find that surprising, too?

Like you, thanks to JA and GH I was under the impression that the age of marriage for women was early twenties or even late teens. Another interesting thing is that 24 years and 9 months was the mean age, not just the average age. That means that it wasn't just two separate groups of (say) fifteen-year-olds and 35-year-olds averaged out, but that a large proportion of these women really were 24-25 when they first married. I think the early-twenties thing was a kind of ideal, in the same way that in old Hollywood movies, young women were also supposedly in their late teens/early twenties when they married, even though in the real world they were generally noticeably older.