Helena Kelly

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.

In her startling debut, Helena Kelly provides a fascinating new perspective and re-evaluation of one of English Literature’s most celebrated novelists. Jane Austen, The Secret Radical demonstrates that Austen’s subjects are, in fact, serious and her books deeply subversive - we just haven’t been reading them properly for 200 years.

In this brilliantly original book, 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 politically engaged Austen, you will be encouraged to read Jane all over again.