Part celebration of Jane Austen's literary achievements, part writing advice, this essay invites you to take inspiration from Jane Austen to write your own stories. A lot of space is devoted to an analysis of what makes a Jane Austen novel, but the writing prompts are general enough to fit different perspectives. I'd recommend this book if you don't need specific advice on writing but could do with a little push to consider your work from another angle. Although SFFF is clearly not the focus here, I think sometimes it's nice to look at how writers from other genres do it and who knows? A little banter or small-town drama could take your space opera epic into unexpected directions.

Although I found the quotes often too long, the contextualisation was often on point and concise. One thing I also appreciated was when at the end Rebecca Smith pointed out Jane Austen's prejudices. Although this is very much an ode to her writing, the author included a short part about Austen's fatphobia which was quite welcome.