Jane Austen

Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey" took a meandering course toward publication. Originally written in 1803 as a satire of the popular Gothic novels of the day, the book was not published until after Austen's death in 1817. The story concerns seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland, who has lived her entire life in the small village of Fullerton with her parents and nine siblings. This sedate (and frankly boring) life is upended when Catherine receives...

"Persuasion" is the last of six books by the legendary British author Jane Austen. It was written during the years 1815-16 and published posthumously in 1818. In the story, we meet Anne Elliot, whose family is in crisis. Anne's once-wealthy father - widowed for fourteen years - has fallen into financial ruin and the family is forced to rent their estate and move to more modest accommodations. What's more, the family that moves in to the house...

Charlotte Collins, née Lucas, is the respectable wife of Hunsford's vicar, and sees to her duties by rote: keeping house, caring for their adorable daughter, visiting parishioners, and patiently tolerating the lectures of her awkward husband and his condescending patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Intelligent, pragmatic, and anxious to escape the shame of spinsterhood, Charlotte chose this life, an inevitable one so socially acceptable that its...