It"s refreshing to get such a passionate and contrarian account of Jane Austen"s life, though the book"s emphasis on thwarted emotions and family misdeeds will undoubtedly displease the more traditional-minded of her admirers. David Nokes, a prominent scholar of 18th-century English literature, views Austen as "a wild beast" (her phrase) transformed by well-meaning relatives into a demure spinster through wholesale bowdlerizing of her letters and personal papers. Nokes"s narrative doesn"t tell us anything new, but by stressing Austen"s ambition and acerbity, he offers a welcome alternative perspective.