This book brings together 33 writers, past and present, on just what it is about Jane Austen that continues to delight, amuse, console and provoke us. Here Jay McInerny confesses to serial crushes on most of Austen's heroines, and celebrates her belief in true love. Amy Hecherling reveals how she transformed Emma into the hit romantic comedy Clueless, and Martin Amis muses on Pride and Prejudice as a divine comedy of love - and imagines a twenty-page sex scene between Lizzy and Darcy. Susanna Clarke shows how happiness depends on a good marriage in Austen's world, while Fay Weldon wonders whether the 'bad' girls in Mansfield Park have more fun.
Whether discussing Austen's gift for comedy, why men and women respond to her differently, or why she would be an ideal dinner guest (although she wouldn't want to come), A Truth Universally Acknowledged shows that there is much more to Jane than ladies in empire-line dresses admiring the roses - and reminds us why we still love the author who wrote about love better than anyone else in the world.
Jane Austen (1775-1817) was modest about her own genius but is one of English literature's greatest and most admired writers. She is the author of Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion.
Susannah Carson is currently a doctoral candidate in French literature at Yale University. Previous degrees include an M.Phil from the Sorbonne Paris III, as well as M.A.s from the Université Lyon II and San Francisco State University. She has given talks on various topics of English and French literature at Oxford, the University of Glasgow, Yale, Harvard, Concordia, and Boston University.