"In her fictional biography, The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields created an astonishing portrait of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a modern woman struggling to understand her place in her own life. With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trade-marks of her award-winning novels, Shields here explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years.".

"In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventon to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma.

With its fascinating insights into the writing process from an award-winning novelist, Carol Shields's magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created."--BOOK JACKET.