Accomplished Woman »

JUDE MORGAN, who studied under Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter, lives in Peterborough, England.

A sparkling tale of wit and romance from a latter-day Jane Austen

As a young woman, clever, self-reliant Lydia Templeton scandalized Regency society by rejecting the county’s most eligible bachelor. Years later, although Lydia would prefer to avoid entanglements of the heart altogether, her godmother begs her to help her young ward make a suitable match. Though the prospect fills Lydia with horror, she can scarcely refuse, but things turn out even worse than she fears when her ward proves surprisingly tricky to manage and the confirmed spinster begins to suspect that her own heart may not be the closed book she thought it was.

Brilliantly written and observed, An Accomplished Woman is a delightfully accomplished comedy of manners.

The Washington Post - Carolyn See

An Accomplished Woman is a lot of fun to read. It's like taking a class in the English novel in summer school. We get to see again all the venerable set pieces of that genre—those outdoor excursions in two coaches, but who's going to ride in which coach? The illnesses, the insults, the wardrobes, the chance meetings in the Pump Room. The awfulness of Mrs. Vawser compared to the awfulness of Mr. Allardyce's preening mama. And, of course, the continuous fear that Phoebe will run off with a scoundrel and be expelled from respectable society…A dunce could guess from Page 10 how this narrative will turn out. But that doesn't take away from the very real pleasure it delivers.