Helen Baker – författare

I want to share the experiences which have set me back on my heels, either rocking with laughter or shaking my head in bewilderment. If any conclusion can be drawn, it must be that nothing is ever what it seems. Enjoy!

How brave are you? Dare you turn your settled life completely upside-down? Would you decamp from one country to another, one continent to another, one hemisphere to another? Could you change from the middle of the countryside to city centre? From the middle of a landmass to the seaside? Abandon your large detached house in its own grounds for a flat? That is what I did last year. Read my adventures here.

A visit of curiosity by a Russian speaker to a tranquil city on the verge of erupting.

Miss Austen wrote ten chapters of a novel she called The Brothers before illness stilled her pen for ever. Now, her entire draft has been incorporated into the complete story. The daring English lady responsible hopes that the resulting romance may satisfy Miss Austen''s myriad admirers who have long regretted that such vivid characters were left in suspense.

Lady Susan is the most beautiful, beguiling schemer in Regency England. She must subjugate every gentleman who crosses her path, conducting multiple flirtations and extracting herself deviously from all the complications. When her husband dies, leaving her destitute with a pretty, innocent daughter on her hands, she uses all her wiles to find them both convenient husbands. Convenient to herself, that is. Jane Austen penned ''Lady Susan'' at nineteen. It was her first completed attempt at a novel, but in the form of letters. She never submitted it for publication. Yet the twenty-three thousand words sparkle with genius. Here, the narrative is presented as it might have appeared as one of Miss Austen''s mature works. If this seems sacrilege, this second English lady authoress begs the public to remember that ''Sense and Sensibility'' was first written in the form of letters. Perhaps, if she had been spared, Miss Austen might have subjected her first youthful work to a similar revision.

The machinations of the Thorpe family dominate Northanger Abbey. Read now how John Thorpe''s extravagance brought his family to the brink of ruin and enabled Captain Tilney to master that proud beauty Isabella Thorpe. Nor would he stop there when she possessed two lovely sisters, one barely sixteen. How can they, geographically separated by the dispersal of the family, resist him? Helen Baker modestly presents her eighth book inspired by Jane Austen and hopes it will give as much pleasure and profit in the reading as in the writing.

We all know Caroline Bingley because the Bennet family suffered from her duplicity. Can such a woman ever be a heroine? In fact she struggled against obstacles which make Lizzy Bennet''s vulgar relations appear trivial.''Superb! I have spent a leisurely and extremely enjoyable two days reading Precipitation... this was SO enjoyable I thoroughly thoroughly enjoyed it.''

In Regency England, a leisured lady wrote eighteen thousand words of a delightful story and then abandoned her attempt. Everyone who read the fragment regretted her decision. Now, all has been incorporated into a complete novel which, it is to be hoped, should give pleasure to many.

With both Elinor and Marianne Dashwood happily established at Delaford, their mother''s thoughts must turn to her remaining daughter Margaret. No one had expected Colonel Brandon to attempt the impossible. Bringing Eliza Williams to Delaford as a respectable daughter of the house was to create grave problems for everyone concerned.

Corpus linguistics has much to offer history, being as both disciplines engage so heavily in analysis of large amounts of textual material.This open access book demonstrates the opportunities for exploring corpus linguistics as a method in historiography and the humanities and social sciences more generally. Focussing on the topic of prostitution in 17th-century England, it shows how corpus methods can assist in social research, and can be used to deepen our understanding and comprehension.McEnery and Baker draw principally on two sources – the newsbook Mercurius Fumigosis and the Early English Books Online Corpus. This scholarship on prostitution and the sex trade offers insight into the social position of women in history.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Jane Austen chronicled Catherine Morland’s successful foray to Bath in her delightful early novel Northanger Abbey. In the background stands another young lady, lovely, amiable and accomplished but living in the shadow of her dominating father. Such is Eleanor Tilney. Now, her own story of long-requited but impossible love can be told. The authoress hopes that those, including Miss Austen herself who knows “no one more entitled, by unpretending merit, or better prepared by habitual suffering, to receive and enjoy felicity”, are satisfied by this relation of events.

Longbourn House in Hertfordshire remains the home of the Bennet family but, five years after the conclusion of Pride and Prejudice, find Kitty and Mary still unwed and discontent. Then Mary''s deep reading leads her to a plan. "it was absolutley delightful , so much so that I couldn''t stop reading and I''ve finished it already!!So the apology is for the amount of time it must have took you but you should feel really pleased to impart that much pleasure - I''m only sorry I''ve finished it now!"

Miss Austen finished Persuasion with an enigma. Was the deceitful widow Mrs Clay so lost to all honour, decency and - yes - self-interest as to live installed in town under the capricious protection of that equal dissembler Mr Elliot Or was the lady, as Lady Russell proclaimed her, a very dangerous companion Was she indeed capable, with neither money nor family connexions to sustain her, of ''wheedling and caressing'' her profligate lord into making her his wife and thus, the future Lady Elliot Without descending into the realms of vice and depravity, the authoress hopes to resolve this puzzle. A recent reader said ''I thoroughly enjoyed your latest - fabulous and the twist in the end was brilliant !!look forward to your next.''

An entertaining way to maintain and improve your English. 2007 jokes for adults, carefully written in correct (British) English with no crude language. Each joke is supplied with helpful explanations of grammar and background. Native speakers too can enjoy the jokes and learn more than most schools teach about grammar.

Jane Austen''s Mansfield Park chronicles the mutual love of Mary Crawford and Edmund Bertram until he abandons his love, claiming that she has forfeited even his respect. Can our flawed heroine, with her beauty, her charm and her twenty thousand pounds ever find a worthy gentleman who will appreciate her for those very qualities that Edmund deplored? How many trials and difficulties must she first surmount while all Regency England echoes to the public debate of her brother''s adultery and her dissolute uncle''s blatant vice? Can Mary, innocent and kind, despite her worldly standards and cynical friends, stand firm against society''s censure?

Corpus linguistics has much to offer history, being as both disciplines engage so heavily in analysis of large amounts of textual material.This open access book demonstrates the opportunities for exploring corpus linguistics as a method in historiography and the humanities and social sciences more generally. Focussing on the topic of prostitution in 17th-century England, it shows how corpus methods can assist in social research, and can be used to deepen our understanding and comprehension.McEnery and Baker draw principally on two sources – the newsbook Mercurius Fumigosis and the Early English Books Online Corpus. This scholarship on prostitution and the sex trade offers insight into the social position of women in history.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

Miss Jane Austen started on the delightful novel we now know as Sanditon before illness stopped her pen for ever. I described the season in that seaside resort in The Brothers before realising that it left several favourite characters in limbo. Here I describe the following year in Sanditon and the fates of Sir Edward and Esther Denham and Lady Denham''s testimentary dispositions.