Book details

Book description

What are the right and wrong ways to propose marriage?
What do the characters call each other, and why?
And which important Austen characters never speak?

In twenty short chapters, each of which answers a question prompted by Jane Austen's novels, John Mullan illuminates the themes that matter most to the workings of Austen's fiction. Inspired by an enthusiastic reader's curiosity, based on a lifetime's study and written with flair and insight, What Matters in Jane Austen? uncovers the hidden truth about an extraordinary fictional world. Fascinating ... If you love Jane Austen, you'll love this book too - it's almost as good as finding an unpublished novel John Mullan is a professor in the English department at UCL. He writes the regular Guardian Book Club column on fiction in the Guardian and frequently appears on the BBC s Review Show . He was a judge of the Best of the Booker Prize in 2008 and a judge of the Man Booker Prize itself in 2009. He has lectured widely on Jane Austen in the UK and also in the US, and makes regular appearances at the UK literary festivals.