Jane Austen is a formative influence on how we think about "England" and "Englishness," about class, ideology and gender issues. But critical convoy for "Jane," as she is patronizingly styled, aligns her with the conservative views her texts entertain but don't finally embrace. In fact, as Edward Neill points out in this new study, it is possible to show that "Tory Jane" is largely an illusion and that much traditional critical effort has been fundamentally misdirected. This exhilarating book seeks to liberate the reading of Jane Austen by offering a very different critical inflection from those of traditional critical appropriations.