Audrey Hawkridge discusses the men associated with the writer - including a mysterious suitor whom Jane developed a strong attachment for in her mid-twenties - to discover her feelings for them, mainly as expressed in those surviving letters to her sister Cassandra that her sibling did not feel the need to censor. The book also considers how these associations influenced the author's life and the depiction of her male characters in her fiction. In addition, Audrey Hawkridge looks in detail at Jane's relationships with her brothers, father and other male family members and friends and how - unlike many of her contemporaries - her preference for living and working quietly in the country was more important to her than the idea of marriage without love.