In the person of Aunt Fay, distinguished novelist and dramatist Fay Weldon addresses a nonexistent niece, Alice, in a brilliant series of letters that pay tribute to a great writer and, by extension, to the art of writing. This fictional correspondence is a tour de force of literary invention as well as a dead-on commentary on literary fashion, changing values, the preservation of culture, and wars between the sexes and generations.

(Key Words: Fiction, Literary Theory, Jane Austen, Fay Weldon, Nieces).