Most of us reserve a special place in our hearts for Jane Austen and her magnificent characters. We know them all through the books, of course, and also through TV and cinema. This particular gem of a book, however, goes a step further, further back into that world we so often dream about.

Ros Ballaster knows Jane Austen inside out. She is Professor of 18th-century Studies in the Faculty of English, Oxford University and Professorial Fellow of English at Mansfield College, Oxford. She is the editor of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for Penguin Classics (1995) and her most recent academic monograph is Fictions of Presence: Theatre and Novel in 18th-century Britain.

She has used her love of Austen, combined with her knowledge of the era to produce a stunning gift book which features extracts from the novels and juvenilia, each accompanied by a corresponding colour fashion plate, first seen in the famous Regency magazine La Belle Assemblee published from 1806 to 1832.

Jane Austen’s Fashion Bible is quite unlike anything you have seen before and a perfect way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the author’s birth.