Jane and Her Gentlemen: Jane Austen and the Men in Her Life and Novels - Softcover

'Turning a spotlight on a single subject can sometimes provide more dramatic insight than is achieved by crowding the stage with a full cast... Audrey Hawkridge's new angle provides a useful perspective on on the crowd of data found in traditional biography... In the spirit of Austen's words, Hawkridge eschews simplistic equations, while at the same time providing sufficient information to lead the reader to parallels between family members and fictional heroes... Good reading.' - Jane Austen Society of America

This absorbing new study reveals her to be much more worldly than many have given her credit for, and that she was never short of suitors and male friends. Looking at those in her family and her social circle - both formal acquaintances and romantic attachments - we see what Jane thought of them and how they affected her life. Audrey Hawkridge also analyses the male characters in Austen's novels - now considered rather more rounded than they once were - and how the real men she knew and socialized with shed their own light on the men in her works.