The Jane Austen Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman

by Lori Smith

Overview

Jane Austen has become our patron saint of romance, our goddess of happy endings. Her name is synonymous with romantic sighs, period costumes, and the ideal of what love should be. But if she could give us advice about life and love, what would she tell us? What would she make of Match.com, of our Real Housewives, or of our obsession with finding The One? Austen's stories give us relationship advice that still works today, but her life offers us so much more wisdom than just that pertaining to love. In our fame-obsessed culture, it's refreshing to think that Austen preferred to remain anonymous. Ironically, Jane Austen—master of love stories—never married and can teach us something about being single. She also endured many painful circumstances and managed them with grace and humor. In this light biography and guide, author Lori Smith surmises about Austen's sensible advice for twenty-first-century women—on everything from living our dreams, being a woman of substance, finding a good man, managing money, and much more. As such an astute student of human nature, Austen can teach us an awful lot about ourselves and about what it means to live well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762773817
Publisher:	Skirt!
Publication date:	05/01/2012
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Lori Smith is an adorer of Jane Austen and a member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She feels connections to Austen on many levels—as a writer, a single woman, an Anglican, and as someone struggling with a mysterious chronic illness. She is the author of A Walk with Jane Austen, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Smith's writing has also appeared in Washington Post Book World, Publishers Weekly, Beliefnet.com, Skirt! and Today's Christian Woman. Lori lives in Northern Virginia with her sweet but stubborn English lab, Bess. Visit her online at www.writerlorismith.com or at the Jane Austen Quotes blog, www.austenquotes.com.

Editorial Reviews

"Jane Austen has been my life coach since I first discovered Pride and Prejudice thirty years ago. After reading Lori Smith's lovely The Jane Austen Guide to Life, I now understand why. Part Austen biography, how-to-guide, and all heart, this engaging book will sensibly explain the mysteries of relationships, life, and love that Jane Austen so excelled in on the page and in her own life." —Laurel Ann Nattress, editor, Jane Austen Made Me Do It and Austenprose.com"Highly engaging. . . . Lori consults Jane Austen's novels and letters and allows the author's sparkling wit, straight moral compass, and wise words to guide us in the 21st century. At times I could almost hear Jane speaking directly to me." —Vic Sanborn, Jane Austen's World blog Praise for Lori Smith's A Walk with Jane Austen "A lovely, intimate read."–Karen Joy Fowler, best-selling author of The Jane Austen Book Club "Lyrical and questioning...perfectly pitched."–Emma Campbell Webster, actress, author of Lost in Austen, and founder of lostinaustenblogspot.com"With wit, charm, and rare honesty–of which I have to believe Jane Austen would have thoroughly approved–Lori Smith weaves her personal life experiences throughout her journey into the life that was Jane's. Infused with faith, romance, loss, and a search for self, A Walk with Jane Austen makes for that rare book that keeps popping into one's thoughts and beckoning one back."–Tamara Leigh, author of Perfecting Kate and Splitting Harriet

From the Publisher