This is the definitive illustrated guide to Jane Austen's life and times--including her personal relationships and the attitudes of the period that shaped her . . . and were in turn shaped by her work.

For the past 200 years--although never more than in recent decades--Jane Austen's sharp and witty novels have delighted a diverse and devoted readership. Her fans have a bottomless hunger for details about the woman behind the work, and this biography feeds their appetite with background on her relationships with family and friends, contemporary attitudes, and the places where she lived and set her novels, from rural Hampshire to fashionable Bath Spa. Drawing on personal archives, Jane Austen offers an insightful view of the author; it features rare and fascinating documents, including early manuscripts; a handwritten note outlining the profits from her novels; a letter from Jane's father to the publisher Thomas Cadell (returned with the words "Rejected by return of post" written on it); and pages from the unfinished manuscript of Sanditon.

Reissue in a new format, with previously removable documents printed on the page.