From the 2003 edition of Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence:  In Becoming Jane Austen, Jon Spence shows how events and people in Jane Austen’s own early life affected her so deeply that she continually reshaped them into the plot and characters of her fiction. He pays special attention to two individuals: Tom Lefroy and Eliza de Feuillade.

Tom is the charming young man, about to begin law studies, whom Austen met at a ball when she was just twenty. The two quickly fell in love and hoped to marry.

Eliza is the glamorous, flirtatious older cousin who married a French count who lost his head to the guillotine during the French Revolution. Her unabashed pursuit of Jane’s younger brother Henry, which began when he was only fifteen, shocked the future author.

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