This is the definitive illustrated guide to Jane Austen's life and
times--including her personal relationships and the attitudes of the
period that shaped her . . . and were in turn shaped by her work.
For the past 200 years--although never more than in recent decades--Jane
Austen's sharp and witty novels have delighted a diverse and devoted
readership. Her fans have a bottomless hunger for details about the
woman behind the work, and this biography feeds their appetite with
background on her relationships with family and friends, contemporary
attitudes, and the places where she lived and set her novels, from rural
Hampshire to fashionable Bath Spa. Drawing on personal archives, Jane
Austen offers an insightful view of the author; it features rare and
fascinating documents, including early manuscripts; a handwritten note
outlining the profits from her novels; a letter from Jane's father to
the publisher Thomas Cadell (returned with the words "Rejected by return
of post" written on it); and pages from the unfinished manuscript of
Sanditon.
Reissue in a new format, with previously removable documents printed on
the page.