Jane Austen is one of the world’s most beloved writers, but despite the tranquil, even cosy, image of her life and work in popular imagination, she actually lived through a period of immense change. The American Revolutionary War began the year of her birth. The French Revolution broke out in 1789, when she was thirteen. All through Austen’s teenage years and early adulthood, old certainties were being challenged, and new ideas were springing up – about democracy, freedom, slavery, poetry, and the position of women.

This book takes a fresh look at Jane Austen’s life, inspirations and legacy, drawing on the latest research in an accessible and lively way. Coupled with a fascinating range of illustrations, the book will be the perfect introduction to the writer for those encountering her work for the first time as well as those for whom she is a familiar presence.

Helena Kelly holds a doctorate in English Literature from Oxford, where she has also taught from time to time and where she is about to return for a visiting scholarship at the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College.

She is the author of The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens (November 2023), already praised by Kirkus Reviews as ‘a literary bio that deftly untangles truth from untruth’, and of Jane Austen, the Secret Radical (2016), hailed as ‘a sublime piece of literary detective work’ (The Observer) and ‘an interpretive coup that is dazzling and dizzying’ (The New Yorker).