Letters to Alice : On First Reading Jane Austen

Alice is an eighteen-year-old student and aspiring novelist with green spiky hair, a child of the modern age who recoils at the idea of reading Jane Austen.

In a sequence of letters reminiscent of Jane Austen's to her own neice, 'aunt' Fay examines the rewards of such study.

Not only is her correspondence a revealing tribute to a great writer - it is also an original and rewarding exploration of the craft of fiction itself.