Overview

Fanny Price, in Mansfield Park, tells her persistent suitor that ""we have all a better guide in ourselves . . . than any other person can be."" Sometimes, however, we crave external guidance: and when this happens we could do worse than seek it in Jane Austen's own subtle novels. Written to coincide with Austen's 250th birthday, this approachable and intimate work shows why and how--for over half a century--Austen has inspired and challenged its author through different phases of her life. Part personal memoir, part expert interaction with all the letters, manuscripts, and published novels, Janet Todd's book reveals what living with Jane Austen has meant to her and what it might also mean to others. Todd celebrates the undimmable power of Austen's work to help us understand our own bodies and our environment, and teach us about patience, humor, beauty and the meaning of home.

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9798228635319

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Janet Todd has been thinking and writing about books for more than half a century. She has been a biographer, novelist, critic, editor, and memoirist. In the 1970s, she helped open up the study of early women writers by beginning a journal and compiling encyclopedias before editing the complete works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Aphra Behn, and Jane Austen. She has worked in English departments in Africa, the West Indies, the US, and the UK. A former president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, she is now an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish and Newnham Colleges and an Emerita Professor of the University of Aberdeen.

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