Jane Austen is unique among British novelists in maintaining her popular appeal while receiving more scholarly attention now than ever before. This introduction by Janet Todd, leading scholar and editor of Austen's work, explains what students need to know about her novels, life, context and reception. Each novel is discussed in detail, and the essential information is given about her life and literary influences, her novels and letters, and her impact on later literature. For this second edition, the book has been fully revised; a new chapter explores the ways in which Austen's work has...

Jane Austen is unique among British novelists in maintaining her popular appeal while receiving more scholarly attention now than ever before. This introduction by Janet Todd, leading scholar and editor of Austen's work, explains what students need to know about her novels, life, context and reception. Each novel is discussed in detail, and the essential information is given about her life and literary influences, her novels and letters, and her impact on later literature. For this second edition, the book has been fully revised; a new chapter explores the ways in which Austen's work has...

Aphra Behn (1640-89) was a popular poet, author of the influential novel Oroonoko, and one of the most successful dramatists of the Restoration theater. Behn led an unusually active and eventful life for a woman of her era, traveling widelyto Surinam in 1663 and to Antwerp in 1666, where Charles II sent her as a spy during the Anglo-Dutch war. Returning to England she spent some time in a debtor's prison and subsequently devoted herself to writing, publishing numerous poems and almost twenty plays between 1670 and 1689.

Because of the overtly political nature of her work, much of...