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Award-winning narrator and internationally acclaimed writer/comedienne Alison Larkin brings depth and wit to this rich, hugely entertaining audio production of Jane Austen's last two great novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. The novels are followed by The History of England, a short satirical piece in which the teenage Austen writes about the kings and queens of England with less respect (and more wit) than any British newspaper, and Poems, a selection of lesser known, mostly comic verses that Austen wrote to entertain family and friends.

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is considered by many scholars to be the first great woman novelist. Born in Steventon, England, she later moved to Bath and began to write for her own and her family's amusement. Her novels, set in her own English countryside, depict the daily lives of provincial middle-class families with wry observation, a delicate irony, and a good-humored wit.

Alison Larkin was born in Washington, DC, adopted at six weeks old by British parents, and raised in England and Africa. After graduating from Royal Holloway College, London University, and the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she became a playwright and classical actress on the British stage. Then, at twenty-eight, she found her birth mother, who was living in Bald Mountain, Tennessee. The experience turned her into a stand-up comic. She was soon headlining at the Comic Strip in New York and the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, while maintaining her theatrical career. She also spent three years under a studio development contract to star in her own sitcom with ABC, CBS, and Jim Henson Productions. Her unusually wide range of voices can be heard in cartoons and movies, from work by James Cameron and Robert Altman to Pocahontas and The Wonder Pets. The audiobook of The English American, narrated by Alison, won an AudioFile Earphones Award.