Jane Austen's First Love

July 1, 2014
There seems to be no end to our fascination with Jane Austen, as evidenced by the many works of fiction that feature her as a character. Here she is a lively, clever, and somewhat impetuous 15-year-old, who travels with others in her family to Kent to attend the festivities leading up to the marriage of her oldest brother. Along the way, she meets another member of the party, Edward Taylor, and fancies herself in love with him during the three-week visit to her brother's new relations. When several planned activities have to be canceled, Jane proposes putting on a play, Midsummer Night's Dream. She hopes the play will help further her misguided attempts at matchmaking, but the results are not what she expects. James, who also wrote The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen (2008) and The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen (2012), explains in an afterword that she based almost all of the characters in the novel on real people and the story was inspired by actual events. Fans of all things Austen will have fun with this.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)