Jane Austen

''Pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked,'' Jane Austen wrote to her niece Fanny Knight a few months before she died. Yet most traditional accounts of Austen''s life have insisted on portraying her as just such a picture of perfection. In his 1997 biography David Nokes re-examined Austen, and presented a far richer and livelier picture of the woman who once wrote in another of her letters, ''If I am a wild beast, I cannot help it ...''.

''A fine book, probably the best tribute to the genius of Jane.'' Glasgow Herald

''[This book] cries out to be read, not alone by fans of Jane Austen but by anyone who enjoys a great, witty, gossipy read.'' Irish Times

''What fun Nokes''s book is.'' Fay Weldon, Independent

''David Nokes is assertive, energetic, opinionated, satirical, supremely confident, dramatising and gleefully splenetic.'' Hermione Lee