All the poems Jane Austen wrote, and many of those she read and valued, and which play a part in her novels.

Douglas Brooks-Davies was born in Wimbledon in 1942, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Crosby and Brasenose College, Oxford. Formerly Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester, where he remains an Honorary Research fellow, he has published widely on Renaissance and later literature, and is now a freelance writer. His hobbies include gardening, singing, and playing the oboe.