With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Shields here explores the life of a writer whose own novels have delighted readers for the past two hundred years. In JANE AUSTEN, Shields follows this superb novelist from her early family life in Steventon to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, and EMMA. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Carol Shields' magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.