WITH DAZZLING WIT AND KEEN INSIGHT, Jane Austen chronicles the subtleties and nuances of—and the aspirations and machinations at work in—her own social milieu. Through the stories of her spirited heroines and their circles, their interac- tions and rituals, their movements from ballrooms to drawing rooms, from London and Bath to park- lands and gardens, she recreates the English gentry life that she observed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Each of her novels is a love story and a story about marriage—marriage for love, for financial security, for social status. But they are not romances; ironic, comic, wise, and penetrating, they are bril- liant portrayals of the society Jane Austen knew.

Enhanced by a fond and lively introduction by bestselling author Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club), this treasure trove of Seven novels is a must for every Austen fan.