Features the author's thoughts on life, from practical to lighthearted to philosophic.

A comprehensive guide to Austen's works in the contexts of her contemporary world and present-day criticism.

Jane Austen has been one of the world's most popular writers for 200 years and is best known for her works Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility.

Courtship, marriage, adultery, class and "rank," mundane tasks of ordinary life, all appear, as does the wider political and military world - especially the navy, in which her brothers served."--BOOK JACKET.

Reflecting the dynamic and expansive nature of Austen studies, A Companion to Jane Austen provides 42 essays from a distinguished team of literary scholars that examine the full breadth of the English novelist's works and career. Provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date array of Austen scholarship Functions both as a scholarly reference and as a survey of the most innovative speculative developments in the field of Austen studies Engages at length with changing contexts and cultures of reception from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries

Written for readers at all levels, this book situates Jane Austen in her time, and for all times. It provides a biography; locates her work in the context of literary history and criticism; explores her fiction; and features an encyclopedic, readable resource on the people, places and things of relevance to Austen the person and writer. Details on family members, beaux, friends, national affairs, church and state politics, themes, tropes, and literary devices ground the reader in Austen's world. Appendices offer resources for further reading and consider the massive modern industry that has grown up around Austen and her works.