The main character, Sophie Collingwood, inherits first a love of books and then a valuable book collection from her uncle. When, through a legal loophole, the collection is sold without her knowledge, she sets out to recover as many of the volumes as she can. In the course of doing so, she meets two men and discovers what appears to be an early version of Pride and Prejudice in an old book -- one printed before Jane Austen wrote the book.
Flashbacks depict Jane Austen, not yet an authoress, and a fictional cleric, Richard Mansfield, becoming acquainted in Kent. Lovett makes his Mr. Mansfield an elderly gentleman, to avoid any creepy hints at romance with the novelist, but I am horrified by the implication that Jane would need someone of any age to mansplain writing to her, particularly when her actual first reader and giver of feedback was her sister Cassandra, a historical woman who is entirely passed over in favor of the author's made-up man who inspires, guides, and becomes a kindred spirit of Jane Austen.
Over the course of some tedious present-day machinations and fisticuffs, Sophie attempts to prove that Jane Austen and not the previously-unknown Richard Mansfield is the true author of Pride and Prejudice, but one wonders why she bothers, given that Lovett's imaginary backstory makes Mansfield as good as a collaborator and the one person most responsible for Jane's career. Sophie herself is an unlikable heroine, at one point stealing one of her uncle's books back from a man who paid good money for it and feeling herself justified and later stealing a book from a library, an act truly beyond the pale for any bibliophile. There's also a pointless, charmless, chemistryless Darcy-Lizzy-Wickham-style love triangle which ascribes no glory to anyone involved.
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