Name: Jane Austen, the Secret Radical
ISBN: 9781524732103

Helena Kelly

Invites readers to look deeper into Austen's work and see her true, subversive nature which brought to life such radical subjects as slavery, poverty, feminism, the Church, and evolution.

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

‘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.

Aubrey Hicks

Kelly is a professor of classics and English Literature at the University of Oxford. 
So ... the most surprising thing about this book is the accessibility. Academics aren’t particularly known for being able to communicate to people outside the academy (with the exception of a bunch of people I know and love!). Refreshing. 

This is a book for Jane Austen lovers; for the once, current, and future English Lit crowd; and readers everywhere. Kelly attempts to put readers into the minds of readers at the time of publication, or writing. Context is key. Pride and Prejudice can remain a light-hearted romance, or a reader can dig a little deeper into some of the choices Austen made as a writer to see the political and social context. I won’t give this a full 5 star rating, as Kelly does sometimes talk down to the reader. It doesn’t happen often, yet when it does it’s blindingly snobbish.

Accessible. Enlightening. Recommended.

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

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