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Bestselling author Dr Paula Byrne overturns the traditional portrait of Jane Austen as conventional and genteel. She explores the forces that made Austen including her father’s faith, her mother’s aristocratic pedigree, her brothers’ military experiences and her struggles to become a writer. Austen emerges as a much tougher, more socially and politically aware, and more modern woman than is often thought.

Byrne is a research fellow in English literature at University of Liverpool. She has written a number of acclaimed works including Jane Austen and the Theatre; Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson; and Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead.