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An iconoclastic re-evaluation of one English Literatures most celebrated novelists

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´A sublime piece of literary detective work that shows us once and for all how to be precisely the sort of reader that Austen deserves.´ Caroline Criado-Perez, Guardian

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.

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´What this radical re-reading ... does so brilliantly is to exhort us all to chuck out the chintz, and the teacups, and all the traditional romantic notions about Austen´s work that have been fed to us for so long ... However well you think you know the novels, you´ll be raring to read them again once you´ve read this.´ Caroline Sanderson

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Helena Kelly holds degrees in Classics and English from Oxford and King´s College London. She teaches Austen at an Oxford summer school, and for a programme for American visiting students in Bath. She has taught Austen to hundreds of people, of all ages, nationalities, and backgrounds. Jane Austen, The Secret Radical is her first book.

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