Eliza's Daughter

Joan Aiken's many successes have included two novels modeled on Austen: Jane Fairfax, after Emma, and Mansfield Revisited, a sequel to Mansfield Park. Presumption? No, as the author herself answers, "love and admiration." Joan Aiken recreates Jane Austen's characters and her unmistakable sound with the assurance of a writer who has found a voice she loves. In Eliza's Daughter, Joan Aiken introduces Liz, a heroine more impetuous than the Dashwoood sisters ever allowed themselves to be. Liz is raised as a charming and incorrigible tomboy in the town of Byblow Bottom, famous for housing the misbegotten children of the gentry. Though often neglected, the young Eliza is spirited and never misfortuned. Wandering about Byblow, she is unknowingly befriended by the learned and impassioned poets Wordsworth and Coleridge on their long walks. When she gets older she is brought to the manor house as a companion to the frail child who lives there. Her circumstances thus improved, she is sent off to the Dashwoods: she sews by the hearth with the admirable Elinor, she gleans gossip from the flighty Margaret, and she clashes with the passionate Marianne. They then decide that she would benefit from Miss Hazlitt's school. Traveling around the world, Eliza is a heroine without need of a hero. Just as she transforms her own life with fierce strength and determination, she also earns a place of her own in Jane Austen's beloved family of women.


Genre: Historical