Irene Collins graduated in History at Oxford and taught for many years at Liverpool University, where she is now Reader Emeritus. As a popular lecturer to history societies throughout the U.K., and the author of several books and articles on Briain and Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, she was awarded in 1996 the Historical Association's Norton Medlicott Medal for Services to History. Her interest in the connection between history and literature has led her to focus her attention on the life and novels of Jane Austen, on which she has lectured widely in both England and America. She is a Vice-President of the Jane Austen Society, and Patron of the Northern Branch.