This collection brings together a selection of recent representative critical essays on Austen from a variety of perspectives. All of them take for granted the brilliance of her achievement, but they also make the case that she deserves to be taken seriously.

On Jane Austen / --Biography of Jane Austen / -- The Paris review perspective / -- Jane Austen: a cultural and historical context / -- Jane Austen: the critical reception / -- Pride, prejudice, and persuasion: a comparison of two novels by Jane Austen / -- Emma / -- Jane Austen and female reading / -- Why there's no sex in Jane Austen's fiction / -- Liberty, connection, and tyranny: the novels of Jane Austen and the aesthetic movement of the picturesque / -- Of woman borne: male experience and feminine truth in Jane Austen's novels / -- Rank and status / -- Early phase versus major phase: the changing feelings of the mind / -- Conjecturing possibilities: reading and misreading texts in Jane Austen's Pride and prejudice / -- Pride and prejudice and the beauty of justice / Sarah Emsley. On Jane Austen -- Biography of Jane Austen -- The Paris review perspective -- Jane Austen: a cultural and historical context -- Jane Austen: the critical reception -- Pride, prejudice, and persuasion: a comparison of two novels by Jane Austen -- Emma -- Jane Austen and female reading -- Why there's no sex in Jane Austen's fiction -- Liberty, connection, and tyranny: the novels of Jane Austen and the aesthetic movement of the picturesque -- Of woman borne: male experience and feminine truth in Jane Austen's novels -- Rank and status -- Early phase versus major phase: the changing feelings of the mind -- Conjecturing possibilities: reading and misreading texts in Jane Austen's Pride and prejudice -- Pride and prejudice and the beauty of justice.