Almost everything we think we know about Jane Austen is wrong. Her novels don't confine
themselves to grand houses and they were not written just for readers' enjoyment. She writes
about serious subjects and her books are deeply subversive. We just don't read her properly -
we haven't been reading her properly for 200 years. Jane Austen The Secret Radical puts that
right. In her first brilliantly original book Austen expert Helena Kelly introduces the
reader to a passionate woman living in an age of revolution to a writer who used what was
regarded as the lightest of literary genres the novel to grapple with the weightiest of
subjects - feminism slavery abuse the treatment of the poor the power of the Church even
evolution - at a time and in a place when to write about such things directly was seen as
akin to treason. Uncovering a radical spirited and political engaged Austen Jane Austen The
Secret Radical will encourage you to read Jane all over again.
