Worth Reading, If I Can Find Them

Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography
P.D. James
(this one I have actually read already, soon after it came out seven or eight years ago, before I became a Jane Austen fanatic and was merely a P.D. James fanatic. Apparently she talks about how "Emma" is like a detective story. I had forgotten that part.)


The British Housewife: or, the Cook, Housekeeper's and Gardener's Companion
By Martha Bradley. Prospect books, 1997.
309 pages. Paperback. $19.

Almost Another Sister: Fanny Knight, Jane Austen's Favourite Niece
By Margaret Wilson.
George Mann of Maidstone, 1998.
x + 175 pages. Illustrations. Paperback, $20.00.

Fanny, Fanny, Fanny. Author of that so-mean letter about Jane in your old age. What happened? I hope this book will explain.

Jane Austen’s “Outlandish Cousin”: The Life and Letters of Eliza de Feuillide

By Deirdre Le Faye.
The British Library, 2002. 192 pages.
10 B/W illustrations. Hardcover. $35.00.

Many biographer see Eliza de Feuillide, whose second husband was none other than Henry Austen, as the fictional inspiration for Mary Crawford.