Tytler set out to give one volume to young readers who had heard of Austen and read none of her: the life, and then each novel in turn, with enough of the story to send them to the originals. She was a Scottish writer of popular history and fiction who did this sort of thing for a living and did it honestly. The judgments are Victorian and stated plainly, which makes them easy to argue with. Fifty-nine plates, from Joseph Wright of Derby to John Everett Millais, gather the cottage, road, and portrait pieces of Austen's century into a single visual companion.
