What Jane Austen was as a novelist has been told a great many times, but what she was as a woman is not so well known. It is the purpose, therefore, of Mr. Oscar Fay Adams, in his "Story of Jane Austen's Life," to "place her before the world as the winsome, delightful woman that she really was, and thus to dispel the unattractive, not to say forbidding, mental picture that so many have formed of her."

Mr. Adams is evidently a great admirer of Miss Austen, and, while at times he allows this heroic-worship to color some of his accounts, his story of her life is, in general, correct and readable. He tells of her "childhood at Steventon," her "first visit to Bath," her "removal to Bath," her enjoyment of society there, and a thousand and one things which are or interest to the admirers of Miss Austen. Mr. Adams spent the summer of 1889 in visiting all the localities once familiar to Jane Austen and the descriptions of Bath, Steventon, Chamton, and other places can therefore be said to have the merit of accuracy at least. Chapter 12, on the "Character of Jane Austen Shown in Her Writings," will be of particular interest to students in English 9. In this chapter the author has given at some length his own conception of Miss Austen,-which might be summed up in a few lines. While she "may not have seen so far into the deeps of motive as some of her successors, and may not have been able to trace the influence of circumstance upon character with as unerring skill, yet within her range-a range too, that is much wider than her superficial readers suspect-she has no equal."

At the end of the book there is a complete list of all biography and criticism of Jane Austen. [The Story of Jane Austen's Life, by Oscar Fay Adams. 16 mo. pp. 277. Chicago, A. C. McClurg and Company.]