Raff sets her study in the early nineteenth century world, depicting the cultural debates and literary fandom that provided Austen a fertile playing field. She traces Austen's increasingly libidinal narrative presence (from early experiments in the narrator-reader relationship, to the seductive appeal of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in 'Pride and Prejudice', and on to the outright authorial titillation of 'Emma', 'Persuasion', and 'Northanger Abbey'),while simultaneously offering analysis of her biography that connects prose and life.