In this dynamic new work, combining intellectual history and literary stylistics, Bharat Tandon confronts traditional "ethical" readings of Austen's novels that examine product over process. Reading Austen against the eighteenth-century culture of polite conversation, Tandon proposes that contemporary literature revealed cracks and faultlines in this regimented ideal of socially-binding politeness, and that Austen's style is an active reflection upon these historical circumstances. In examining how concepts such as flirtation - the "twists" and "spins" that Elizabeth and Darcy, for example, put on the shared currency of language and decorum - Tandon explores how Austen's style not only reflects, but performs her ideas: rather than finding Austen's focus on social surfaces to be a stylistic weakness, this book finds that "Austen's surface is intimate with her depths."