Complete and unabridged, with 60 full-page plates by William Beechey, Thomas Lawrence and Thomas Gainsborough. Seven chapters on what Austen actually does: her equipment and method, her contact with life, the absence of passion in her books, her impartiality as a satirist, and the country houses that supply nearly all her ground. Helm wrote in 1909, when the reputation was settled but the criticism was not, and he argues with Balzac and Charlotte Brontë in the margins throughout. Sixty plates of Constable and Turner, from East Bergholt cottage to Hadleigh Castle, catch the landscape and light that surround the country houses Austen's comedy calls home.