''The best (and the best written) book about Austen that has appeared in the last three decades.''--Nina Auerbach, ''Journal of English and Germanic Philology'' ''By looking at the ways in which Austen domesticates the gothic in ''Northanger Abbey,'' examines the conventions of male inheritance and its negative impact on attempts to define the family as a site of care and generosity in ''Sense and Sensibility,'' makes claims for the desirability of 'personal happiness as a liberating moral category' in ''Pride and Prejudice,'' validates the rights of female authority in ''Emma,'' and stresses the benefits of female independence in ''Persuasion,'' Johnson offers an original and persuasive reassessment of Jane Austen's thought.''--Kate Fullbrook, ''Times Higher Education Supplement''