I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend

Cora Harrison

Sep 2018 · Alison Larkin Presents · Narrated by Alison Larkin

About this audiobook

Bestselling novelist Cora Harrison’s light historical romance in the form of a secret diary was inspired by real life events in the Austen family and will delight Jane Austen fans everywhere. When fifteen-year-old Jane Austen’s shy cousin Jenny comes to stay, their evenings are a blur of beautiful dresses, balls, gossip and romance; their days are spend writing about them—Jenny in her diary, Jane in her witty first attempts at fiction. When Jenny falls utterly in love with a handsome naval officer who better to help her than Jane herself, already an expert in love and relationships? With Alison Larkin’s delightful narration, you’ll feel yourself transported to 1791, meeting Jane Austen at age 16, and experiencing what life was like in that long-ago time.

This delightful, meticulously researched novel is followed by an afterword about the actual people and events on which the novel is based, including Jane Austen’s disabled brother, George and the whirlwind courtship of Jane (Jenny) Cooper.

About the author

Cora Harrison worked as a teacher before she decided to write her first novel, and she has since published twenty-six children's historical novels and many books for adults. Cora lives on a farm near the Burren in the west of Ireland. 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.