Fay Weldon
Non-Fiction

Alice, aged eighteen, with green spiky hair, is compelled by her betters to study the works of Jane Austen. Alice, as a child of the modern age, cannot find anything she can related to in Jane's novels and cannot understand why her writing is so much admire. In a sequence of letters her "aunt," the distinguished novelist Fay Weldon, tried to persuade her that she would be silly not to make the effort to understand and appreciate what Jan Austen was trying to do, especially since she herself is trying to write a novel.

Alice is a figment of Fay Weldon's imagination, but in these "letters" she takes the opportunity of paying tribute to a great writer while exploring the craft of fiction from her won standpoint. In a unique and revealing examination of the act of writing creatively, Fay Weldon, a highly admired writer of her own day, echoes a series of letters that Jane Austen actually did send to her niece who was trying to become a novelist, and which summed up her views of what was important in life and literature.

Funny, serious, wise and always diverting, Fay Weldon provides us with a real insight into the mind of a writer and suggests ways of looking at Jane Austen not through a glass darkly but face to face.

Bio from the book jacket:

Fay Weldon is married, a mother of four, and at present lives in England. She writes novels - the latest being The Life and Loves of a She-Devil - stage plays, and film and television screenplays which include the recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for "Masterpiece Theatre." Her work is produced and performed all over the English-speaking world, and has been translated into most European languages.