By a Lady: Being the Adventures of an Enlightened American in Jane Austen's England

Offering a picturesque dose of time travel, romance and the atmosphere of 19th-century England, Elyot follows actress C.J. Welles as she is mysteriously transported between present-day Manhattan and Bath of 1801. After an unfortunate stint as "lady's companion" to the abusive Lady Eloisa Wickham, C.J.'s luck arrives in the form of Lady Dalrymple, a progressive thinker who opens her home and her purse to C.J., believing she is her long-lost niece. Despite the pleasures of her adventures in history, which include steamy romance with the dashing Lord Darlington and friendship with Lady Dalrymple's cousin Jane Austen, C.J. must search for the way back to Greenwich Village, where she's auditioning for the role of Jane Austen in a modern-day play. Although she has to struggle to get a grasp on the customs and expectations of the day, C.J. is swiftly—and somewhat unbelievably—accepted as a British woman of the times. Occasionally, Elyot (pseudonymous author of The Memoirs of Helen of Troy and published elsewhere as Leslie Carroll) indulges in verbosity that thickens and slows the story, but there are plenty of upper-crust scandals and snobbery to keep anglophiles engaged. (Mar.)