Introduction: Austen gone wild -- Fierce, wild, and ruthless : Austen's juvenilia -- The controversial case of Sophia Sentiment -- Running wild : the winning immorality of Lady Susan -- Wildest : Sense and sensibility (1811) -- Almost wild : Pride and prejudice (1813) -- Bewildering Mansfield Park (1814) -- Wild speculation : Emma (1816) -- Wild to know : Northanger Abbey (1818) -- The young people were all wild : Persuasion (1818) -- Wild-goose chase : unfinished Sanditon -- Oh, subjects rebellious : the Watsons and Last words -- Jane, the wild beast, and the progressive Burdetts -- Cousin Eliza's statesman, singer, and spy -- The Leighs as learned literary ladies -- The sensational shoplifting trial of Aunt Jane Leigh Perrot -- Three Austen brothers and the abolition of slavery -- The Austen family legacy, suffrage, and anti-suffrage -- Seeing Jane Austen's ghost -- Sense and sensibility goes to court -- Jane's imaginary lover in Switzerland -- Almost Pride and prejudice : the wild films that never were -- Wild and wanton : the rise of Austen erotica -- Loving (and hating) Jane Austen -- Coda: Austen after 250

"Incisive, funny, and deeply-researched insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen, by the preeminent scholar Devoney Looser. Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we've given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years. All six of Austen's completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen's juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen's relationship to the abolitionist movement and women's suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen's works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition, and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels cited in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction. Written with warmth, humor, and remarkable details never before published, Wild for Austen is the ultimate tribute to Jane Austen"-- Provided by publisher