Irene Collins provides a fresh assessment of the life and work of one of this country’s greatest novelists, whose own wit and charm, combined with a deep insight into human nature, is reflected in her novels. Jane Austen was not the first woman novelist in England to achieve popularity and critical acclaim. Years before she published a word, Charlotte Lennox, Fanny Burney, Mrs Inchbald, Mrs Radcliffe and Maria Edgeworth were writing novels which sold well and won praise from critics as notable as Dr Johnson and Sir Walter Scott. Jane Austen’s particular achievement lies in the fact that, once her novels had secured a place in the affections of the reading public and in the canons of English literature, they kept it. Others were largely forgotten within a generation and have only recently been revived, in some cases because Jane Austen mentioned them.