British biographer, novelist, memoirist, and literary scholar Todd admits that she was late in discovering Jane Austen. “She wasn’t my childhood passion,” she writes, but certainly Austen has become a significant focus of her scholarship: Todd edited the Cambridge edition of Austen’s works and is deeply knowledgeable about her life and times. In an engaging melding of memoir and literary analysis, Todd offers a close reading and personal response to Austen’s most indelible characters, including Emma Woodhouse, Anne Elliot, Elizabeth Bennet, Fanny Price, and the Dashwood sisters, Marianne and Elinor, as well as the men, relatives, friends, and neighbors with whom they interacted. As she reflects on Austen, Todd charts her own path as a scholar, first in England and then in the U.S., where she studied and taught at a time when women’s studies and French critical theory were shaping English departments. Both perspectives informed Women’s Friendship in Literature , her book about intimate...
