Jane Austen's First Love

This was such a sweet and delightful novel!

If you enjoy the writings of Jane Austen, you are sure to enjoy this Austen inspired novel as well.

The author, Syrie James, has taken a sentence from a letter Jane wrote to her sister Cassandra, and has created a wonderful story of what if...

She quotes and writes in the afterword:

"We went by Bifrons and I contemplated with a melancholy pleasure the abode of him, on whom I once fondly doated."

So wrote Jane Austen in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1796. That tantalizing sentence has long intrigued me. Every Austen scholar concludes that Jane, as a young woman, was enamored of Edward Taylor, the heir to Bifrons, a grand manor house and estate in Kent - but the details of their relationship were never known. Who was Edward Taylor? What did he mean to Jane Austen? Did he return her affections? How did they meet? 

Fascinated by the implications of this connection, I was determined to learn as much as I could about it. Unfortunately, Austen biographers presented very little information about Edward Taylor, simply repeating the same brief, generic, reference: that Jane met him while visiting her brother Edward in Kent."

Bifrons Manor in Kent, England

Jane is fifteen and spending the summer in Kent on the engagement of her brother Edward, to Elizabeth Bridges. There Jane meets Edward Taylor, an adventurous young man of seventeen.

Filled with historical persons in Jane Austen's real life, as well as hinting at some of her novel's characters and plots throughout, this book is sure to put a smile on the face of any reader who loves her.  : )


Buy it HERE on Amazon