It chronicles the events of her brief life, examines each of her novels, and looks at why her stories - of women and marriage, class and money, scandal and hypocrisy, emotion and satire - still have meaning for us today. Discover * Why Austen is so popular * The impact on manners, courtships, and dating * Love and life in Austen's world * Her life and key influences * Her most memorable characters

    Name: Elizabeth Bennet. Mission: To marry both prudently and for love. How? It's entirely up to the reader. The journey begins in Pride and Prejudice but quickly takes off on a whimsical Austen adventure of the reader's own creation. A series of choices leads the reader into the plots and romances of Austen's other works. Choosing to walk home from Netherfield Hall means falling into Sense and Sensibility and the infatuating spell of Mr. Willoughby. Accepting an invitation to Bath leads to Northanger Abbey and the beguiling Henry Tilney. And just where will Emma's Mr. Knightley fit in to the quest for a worthy husband? It's all up to the reader. A labyrinth of love and lies, scandals and scoundrels, misfortunes and marriages, Lost in Austen will delight and challenge any Austen lover.

    Going back just a little further, to the beginning of the 19th century, the holiday Jane Austen knew would have looked distinctly odd to modern sensibilities. How odd? Families rarely decorated Christmas trees. Festivities centered on socializing instead of gift-giving. Festivities focused on adults, with children largely consigned to the nursery.  Holiday events, including balls, parties, dinners, and even weddings celebrations, started a week before Advent and extended all the way through to Twelfth Night in January.  Take a step into history with Maria Grace as she explores the traditions, celebrations, games and foods that made up Christmastide in Jane Austen's era. Packed with information and rich with detail from period authors, Maria Grace transports the reader to a longed-for old fashioned Christmas.Non-fiction

    Now, she helps readers discover their inner heroines and get the guy in this witty book of romance and dating strategies.Utilizing wisdom inspired by Jane Austen's novels, from Sense and Sensibility to Pride and Prejudice and beyond, author Lauren Henderson creates an indispensable guide for navigating the all-too-mystifying dating scene. Harnessing the triumphs and pitfalls of Austen's classic characters, Henderson shows how qualities like honesty, self-awareness, and forthrightness always win the right man--and still let you respect yourself in the morning.A completely new and amusing approach to dating, Jane Austen's Guide to Dating includes insightful personality quizzes that reveal which Jane Austen character you--and your mate--most resemble. Armed with this knowledge, you can learn what to do if you're a Lizzie, but the object of your affection is a Bingley. You can even find out how to gain the clearheadedness and confidence that Anne Elliot had and almost lost in Persuasion.Full of wit and truly useful advice that has stood the test of time, Jane Austen's Guide to Dating will help readers overcome the nonsense and find the sense (and sensibility) to succeed in a lasting relationship. Fans of Jane Austen and newcomers alike will delight in this fun, fresh, and audacious guide.

    Who are these obsessed admirers, whose passion has transformed Austen from classic novelist to pop-culture phenomenon? Deborah Yaffe, journalist and Janeite, sets out to answer this question, exploring the remarkable endurance of Austen's stories, the unusual zeal that their author inspires, and the striking cross-section of lives she has touched.Along the way, Yaffe meets a Florida lawyer with a byzantine theory about hidden subtexts in the novels, a writer of Austen fan fiction who found her own Mr. Darcy while reimagining Pride and Prejudice, and a lit professor whose roller-derby nom de skate is Stone Cold Jane Austen. Yaffe goes where Janeites gather, joining a pilgrimage to historic sites in Britain, chatting online with fellow fans, and attending the annual ball of the Jane Austen Society of North America--in period costume. Part chronicle of a vibrant literary community, part memoir of a lifelong love, Among the Janeites is a funny, touching meditation on the nature of fandom.

    This collection of unforgettable characters—including Anne Shirley, Jo March, Scarlett O’Hara, and Jane Eyre—and outstanding authors—like Jane Austen, Harper Lee, and Laura Ingalls Wilder—is an impassioned look at literature’s most compelling heroines, both on the page and off. Readers who found inspiration in books by Toni Morrison, Maud Hart Lovelace, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Alice Walker, or who were moved by literary-themed memoirs like Shelf Discovery and Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, get ready to return to the well of women’s classic literature with The Heroine's Bookshelf.

    This engaging and beautiful book includes the complete Academy Award-winning script and Thompson's own diaries detailing the production of the film, reviewed by Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic as "vivid, funny, and gamy"

    This indispensable companion to the series is packed with colour photographs, interviews and lavish illustrations.Follow a typical day's filming, including the wholesale transformation of Lacock village into Jane Austen's Meryton. Discover how Colin Firth approaches the part of Darcy, how actors' costumes and wigs are designed and how Carl Davis recreates the period music and composes an original score. Piece together the roles of behind-the-scenes contributors from researchers to fencing masters.

    Chances are you’ve also read Jane Eyre; if you were an exceptionally moody teenager, you might have even read Wuthering Heights. English majors might add George Eliot or Virginia Woolf to this list…but then the trail ends. Were there truly so few women writing anything of note during late 18th and 19th century Britain?In Not Just Jane, Shelley DeWees weaves history, biography, and critical analysis into a rip-roaring narrative of the nation’s fabulous, yet mostly forgotten, female literary heritage. As the country, and women’s roles within it, evolved, so did the publishing industry, driving legions of ladies to pick up their pens and hit the parchment. Focusing on the creative contributions and personal stories of seven astonishing women, among them pioneers of detective fiction and the modern fantasy novel, DeWees assembles a riveting, intimate, and ruthlessly unromanticized portrait of female life—and the literary landscape—during this era. In doing so, she comes closer to understanding how a society could forget so many of these women, who all enjoyed success, critical acclaim, and a fair amount of notoriety during their time, and realizes why, now more than ever, it’s vital that we remember.Rediscover Charlotte Turner Smith, Helen Maria Williams, Mary Robinson, Catherine Crowe, Sara Coleridge, Dinah Mulock Craik, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon.

    But beyond these familiar details, the Brontes' story has remained largely obscure. This landmark book is the first definitive history of this fascinating family. Based on eleven years of research among newly discovered letters by every member of the family, original manuscripts, and the newspapers of that time, it gives a new and fuller picture of the Brontes' lives from beginning to end and, in the process, demolishes many myths. The father, Patrick, was not, as commonly believed, the cold patriarch of a family of victims. Charlotte, ruthlessly self-willed, ran roughshod over her sisters and went so far as to alter or destroy their manuscripts when she disapproved. Emily was so psychologically and physically dependent on her fantasy life that she could not survive in the outside world. Anne, widely regarded as the gentlest of the sisters, had a core of steel and was a more daring and revolutionary author than Charlotte. Branwell, the adored brother, was a talented poet who provided much of Charlotte's inspiration.

    In the mid-1990s it became a favorite movie for millions of new admirers.A key reason for Emma's success is that the story has two heroines-Emma Woodhouse and Jane Fairfax. In Austen's novel, Jane's backgound is left obscure, and the turmoil underlying her current reduced circumstances in mysterious.At last we learn her whole story in Joan Aiken's superb retelling of Emma-this time from Jane Fairfax's point of view. When Jane Fairfax was published in hardcover, Aiken's wit, style, and skill prompted Booklist to say, "Brilliant...extraordinarily will done and highly recommended."This worthy companion to the great original is for the first time now available in paperback.

    Packed with detail, and anecdotes, this is an intimate exploration of how the middle and upper classes lived from 1775, the year of Austen’s birth, to the coronation of George IV in 1820. Sue Wilkes skilfully conjures up all aspects of daily life within the period, drawing on contemporary diaries, illustrations, letters, novels, travel literature and archives. •Were all unmarried affluent men really 'in want of a wife'?•Where would a young lady seek adventures?•Would ‘taking the waters’ at Bath and other spas kill or cure you?•Was Lizzy Bennet bitten by bed-bugs while travelling?•What would you wear to a country ball, or a dance at Almack’s?•Would Mr Darcy have worn a corset?•What hidden horrors lurked in elegant Regency houses?Put on your dancing gloves and embrace a lost era of corsets and courtship!

    Passionate, witty and moving, the voices of the Lennox sisters reach us with immediacy and power, drawing the reader into their remarkable lives, and making this one of the most enthralling historical narratives to appear for many years

    They both lived in Georgian England, navigated strict social conventions and new ideals, and they were both influenced by Dorothy’s brother, the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, and his coterie. They were both supremely talented writers yet often lacked the necessary peace of mind in their search for self-expression. Neither ever married.Jane and Dorothy uses each life to illuminate the other. For both women, financial security was paramount and whereas Jane Austen hoped to achieve this through her writing, rather than being dependent on her family, Dorothy made the opposite choice and put her creative powers to the use of her brilliant brother, with whom she lived all her adult life.Though neither path would bring lasting fulfillment and independence, both women’s mark on literary culture is undeniable.  In this probing book, Marian Veevers discovers a crucial missing piece to the puzzle of Dorothy and William’s relationship and addresses enduring myths surrounding the one man who seems to have stolen Jane’s heart, only to break it . . .

    The assembled group included the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; his lover (and future wife) Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; Mary's stepsister Claire Claremont; and Byron's physician, John William Polidori. The famous result was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a work that has retained its hold on the popular imagination for almost two centuries. Less well-known was the curious Polidori's contribution: the first vampire novel. And the evening begat a curse, too: Within a few years of Frankenstein's publication, nearly all of those involved met untimely deaths. Drawing upon letters, rarely tapped archives, and their own magisterial rereading of Frankenstein itself, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler have crafted a rip-roaring tale of obsession and creation.