Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel

"The best (and the best written) book about Austen that has appeared in the last three decades."-Nina Auerbach, *Journal of English and Germanic Philology* "By looking at the ways in which Austen domesticates the gothic in *Northanger Abbey*, examines the conventions of male inheritance and its negative impact on attempts to define the family as a site of care and generosity in *Sense and Sensibility*, makes claims for the desirability of 'personal happiness as a liberating moral category' in *Pride and Prejudice*, validates the rights of female authority in *Emma*, and stresses the benefits of female independence in *Persuasion*, Johnson offers an original and persuasive reassessment of Jane Austen's thought."-Kate Fullbrook, *Times Higher Education Supplement*