One of the first of Jane Austen's novels to be written, and one of the last to be published, Northanger Abbey is both an amusing story of how a naive girl enters society and wins the affection of a witty young clergyman, and a high-spirited parody of the lurid Gothic novels that were popular during Austen's youth. In the process it features a vivid account of social life in late eighteenth-century Bath, and Austen's famous defence of the novel as a literary form. This edition, based on the text of the novel as published posthumously in 1818, is accompanied by explanatory notes, and an...

All the documented facts concerning the novelist are collected in this detailed account of Jane Austen's life, background and literary career. Her role within an affectionate and talented family group is described in the Austens' own words, showing how Jane was valued as daughter, sister, aunt and friend. The book demonstrates how Jane transformed the details of her peaceful life in the Hampshire countryside, along with the wartime careers of her brothers, into six novels that are among the most popular in the English language.

For nearly forty years Deirdre Le Faye, one of the world's leading authorities on Jane Austen, has been gathering and organising every single piece of information available about the Austen family before, during and after Jane's lifetime. She has now collected all this material together to produce a unique chronology, containing some 15,000 entries. For the first time, those interested in Jane Austen can discover where she was and what she was doing at many precise moments of her life. The entries, many taken from hitherto unexplored and unpublished documents, are presented in a clear and...

The most authoritative and most fully annotated critical edition available of Austen's first novel.

Jane Austen's letters afford a unique insight into the daily life of the novelist: intimate and gossipy, observant and informative--they read much like the novels themselves. They bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events, all with a freshness unparalleled in modern biographies. Most important, we recognize the unmistakable voice of the author of such novels as Pride and Prejudice and Emma. We see the shift in her writing from witty and amusing descriptions of the social life of town and country, to a thoughtful and constructive tone while...