Jane Austen - (Penguin Lives Biographies) by Carol Shields (Paperback)

About the Book

Jane Austen gets the biography she deserves from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Stone Diaries."

Book Synopsis

With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Carol Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years. In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventown to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from an award-winning novelist, Carol Shields's magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.

Review Quotes

[Austen] is a mystery, one that Shields explores with the patience and empathy of a devoted fan. ("The Atlanta Journal-Constitution") Shields provides an insider's view of the writer's world?which is what makes this biography so compelling. ("The Philadelphia Inquirer")

About the Author

Carol Shields (1935-2003) is the author of The Stone Diaries, which won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Canada's Governor General's Award. Her other novels and short-story collections include The Republic of Love, Happenstance, Swann, The Orange Fish, Various Miracles, The Box Garden, and Small Ceremonies (all available from Penguin).