Jane Austen: A Life

Description

'Truly marvellous. I cannot think of a better life of Jane Austen than Claire Tomalin's' Philip Hensher Claire Tomalin brings her extraordinary gifts of scholarship, fluent writing and empathy for her subjects to bear on one of our greatest, and most elusive, novelists. Widely acclaimed as the finest of Austen biographies, the book offers us 'a brave, sharp-tongued character who fairly bounces off the page' (Val Hennesy). And along the way it gives us an 'authoratative, graceful,succinct account of a wide swathe of English society which brilliantly illuminates' the novelist (Victoria Glendinning).

Claire Tomalin is a former literary editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times . She has written seven highly acclaimed literary biographies, including Samuel Pepys, which won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and in 2011 the international bestseller Charles Dickens. She is married to the playwright and novelist Michael Frayn.

As near perfect a Life of Austen as we are likely to get: intelligent, feeling, suggestive -- Carmen Callil * Daily Telegraph * A book that radiates intelligence, wit and insight -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times * A perfect biography: detailed, witty, warm -- Dirk Bogarde * Sunday Telegraph * Claire Tomalin is the finest and most disinterested of biographers, because in her pages she has given Jane Austen her liberty -- Hilary Mantel * New York Review of Books *