Title: Disappointing
Review: This book combines a (very) concise biography with several critical essays. The biography was a decent rough sketch of Austen's life and writing compressed into about 30 minutes worth of reading.The included summaries of Austen's works were hasty and thus vastly oversimplified, to the point of uselessness. They contain several minor errors as well, stupid things that the editor should have caught. Anyone new to Austen could get a better overview reading middle school book reports.The critiques are at least thought provoking although not exactly to my taste; the one by Brian Wilkie in particular was a magnificent piece of specious sophistry.If someone needs a quick source for a paper due the next day, the material in this book might be sufficient to make a C, but reading the real thing would be much more satisfying.
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