Jane Austen

This is a competent, readable, brief biography of Jane Austen. It is illustrated with 137 black-and-white illustrations. As a short biography, it is not on the level of Carol Shield's Jane Austen: A Life (Penguin Lives), but perhaps the reader wants the illustrations and the slightly easier read. A title somewhat similar to this is England's Jane: The Story of Jane Austen (World Writers) by Juliane Poirier Locke; that is considered to be a juvenile, but I wouldn't scorn it for that. This book has a little more of the detail external to Jane's life--dates, people she knew, etc. The illustrations are a mixed bag. A number of them, surprisingly for a Thames and Hudson book, are of quite poor quality. A lot of them, however, are nicely reproduced contemporary or near-contemporary illustrations of places associated with Jane Austen. They are so nice, that although I read a library copy of this, I am considering it for my own collection just for the pictures. The poorly reproduced pictures are mostly portraits, which I generally have copies of in other books. A reader interested in places JA is associated with would do well to look at The World of Jane Austen by Nigel Nicholson, a collection of photographs.