The Sidmouth Letters

Jane Austen''s love life- long the subject of speculation- is finally, delightfully dealt with in the title story of this collection. Many of the other stories, like ''The Sidmouth Letters,'' bring together past and present- with sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing, often intensely moving results.

With quiet elegance and devastating accuracy, Jane Gardam probes many and varied lives. We meet a trio of Kensington widows, mean-spirited and middle-aged, paying improbable tribute to a long exploited nanny; we await- with dread- a stranger to tea in an Engliish home; we witness the mercurial changes that take place in young love, and we watch as a bohemian, passionate past returns to tempt domestic bliss.