Miss Austen finished Persuasion with an enigma. Was the deceitful widow Mrs Clay so lost to all honour, decency and - yes - self-interest as to live installed in town under the capricious protection of that equal dissembler Mr Elliot Or was the lad...
Jane Austen's Mansfield Park chronicles the mutual love of Mary Crawford and Edmund Bertram until he abandons his love, claiming that she has forfeited even his respect. Can our flawed heroine, with her beauty, her charm and her twenty thousand pou...
A romance, based on a true incident, of multi-layered intrigue and unexpected passion set in the turmoil of the Wars of Religion in Southern France. Two different beauties, one a vivacious aristocrat, the other a penniless dishonoured waif, both beco...
Longbourn House in Hertfordshire remains the home of the Bennet family but, five years after the conclusion of Pride and Prejudice, find Kitty and Mary still unwed and discontent. Then Mary's deep reading leads her to a plan. "it was absolutl...
An entertaining way to maintain and improve your English. 2007 jokes for adults, carefully written in correct (British) English with no crude language. Each joke is supplied with helpful explanations of grammar and background. Native speakers too can...
Despite what romanticists try to make of it, small-town living is not lacking in its share of social and geographic limitations, especially for those whose lives are keenly touched by it.For the most part of a teacher's life, however, there is no oth...
We all know Caroline Bingley because the Bennet family suffered from her duplicity. Can such a woman ever be a heroine? In fact she struggled against obstacles which make Lizzy Bennet's vulgar relations appear trivial.'Superb! I have spent a leisurel...
Miss Austen wrote ten chapters of a novel she called The Brothers before illness stilled her pen for ever. Now, her entire draft has been incorporated into the complete story. The daring English lady responsible hopes that the resulting romance may s...
The machinations of the Thorpe family dominate Northanger Abbey. Read now how John Thorpe's extravagance brought his family to the brink of ruin and enabled Captain Tilney to master that proud beauty Isabella Thorpe. Nor would he stop there when she ...
Lady Susan is the most beautiful, beguiling schemer in Regency England. She must subjugate every gentleman who crosses her path, conducting multiple flirtations and extracting herself deviously from all the complications. When her husband dies, leavi...
In Regency England, a leisured lady wrote eighteen thousand words of a delightful story and then abandoned her attempt. Everyone who read the fragment regretted her decision. Now, all has been incorporated into a complete novel which, it is to be hop...
With both Elinor and Marianne Dashwood happily established at Delaford, their mother's thoughts must turn to her remaining daughter Margaret. No one had expected Colonel Brandon to attempt the impossible. Bringing Eliza Williams to Delaford as a resp...
Miss Jane Austen started on the delightful novel we now know as Sanditon before illness stopped her pen for ever. I described the season in that seaside resort in The Brothers before realising that it left several favourite characters in limbo. Her...
Miss Jane Austen wrote the opening chapters of what promised to be a delightful novel but, unfortunately for us all, ill health prevented its completion. All her words are incorporated here in the first volume, entitled The Brothers. While this descr...
Miss Jane Austen in her well-loved book Emma introduced us to a mysterious character - Jane Fairfax. Beautiful and talented, she excited admiration and annoyance in equal measure by her reserved character. How could such a paradox have arisen? Howeve...
Jane Austen chronicled Catherine Morland’s successful foray to Bath in her delightful early novel Northanger Abbey. In the background stands another young lady, lovely, amiable and accomplished but living in the shadow of her dominating father....