Jane Austen's six novels have become part of the fabric of English life, and have reached new audiences through dramatizations on stage and screen. This book, which draws on her letters, describes Jane's life in the vicarage at Steventon and later at Bath and Chawton, her relationships with family and friends, especially her beloved sister Cassandra, the society which she inhabited and the detail of 19th-century life which she so sharply observed and which provided a background to the novels she created.