JANE AUSTEN: A LIFE

This is a beautifully lucid and balanced biography in which the biographer is not afraid to appear as a personality. The text is always informed by a keen, but never obsessive, awareness of what can and cannot be known about an intensely private and not very well documented individual. Donada Peters would, one senses, read an Austen novel splendidly. Occasional quotations hint at a considerable command of character voices. She is an ideal voice for this biography, which is written with Austen-like clarity and which wears its solid scholarship lightly. Here is an ideal companion to an Austen collection. J.N. © AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/NOV 99]