My Lives: An Autobiography

Book Description

No one has been more frank, lucid, rueful and entertaining about growing up gay in Middle America than Edmund White. Best known for his autobiographical novels, starting with A Boy's Own Story, White here takes fiction out of his story and delivers the facts of his life in all their shocking and absorbing verity.

From an adolescence in the 1950s, an era that tried to "cure his homosexuality" but found him "unsalvageable," he emerged into a 1960s society that redesignated his orientation as "acceptable (nearly)." He describes a life touched by psychotherapy in every decade, starting with his flamboyant and demanding therapist mother, who considered him her own personal test case -- and personal escort to cocktail lounges after her divorce. His father thought that even wearing a wristwatch was effeminate, though custodial visits to Dad in Cincinnati inadvertently initiated White into the culture of "hustlers and johns" that changed his life.

In My Lives, White shares his enthusiasms and his passions -- for Paris, for London, for Jean Genet -- and introduces us to his lovers and predilections, past and present. "Now that I'm sixty-five," writes White, "I think this is a good moment to write a memoir. . . . Sixty-five is the right time for casting a backward glance, while one is still fully engaged in one's life."

Customer Reviews:

But enough about White.......2007-07-05

Why this book is an autobiography when we've read a lot of it before is beyond me. Must say, the description on how to pick up young men in the greater Cincinnati area was worth reading. White is oh-so-fascinated by his life, which seems akin to being mesmerized by sociological road kill to me. I am over Edmund White, and wish he were, too. YAWN.

White Mischief.......2006-12-05

Edmund White has/is living a rich life. A Life that may or may not be rich in the monetary sense (though this changes throughout his life) but in the sense of being rich with the exalted currency of true friendship. Time and time again in this latest edition of his autobiography (though he may not call his other books "autobiographies," all of his works are drawn from his life as he states herein), "My Lives," White writes about men and women with whom he has remained friends over the course of his entire life: people that are compelled to keep in touch, both Gay and Straight. Some are formers Lovers, Some were objects of White's Lust and sometimes Love. The women, though never lovers, are still his friends because White is the consummate comrade: always available emotionally at least and at best available in the flesh to lend a hand.
"My Lives" is divided into nine sections with names like My Mother, My Shrinks, My Hustlers, Mr. Genet, etc. but naturally all the sections bleed together as White excels in the fine art of straying from the topic. Along the way we get some sterling observations:
"In the 1950's people were ashamed that they were inadequate; in the 1960's they were proud to announce that they were victims...Rilke had said, You must change yourself! But now people said: Everyone else must change."
Though some of what he writes about his Mother, Lila Mae makes me wince, a lot of what White writes about her is very funny: "...Lila Mae's baseless optimism, her coquetry, her insistence that she was an old fashioned gal, 100 % feminine made us (White and his sister Margaret) cackle like gargoyles. Adolescents are wretchedly conventional as they tiptoe nervously into the great crowded ballroom of adulthood."
As he does with all facets of his life, White's examination of his sexual obsessions is exhaustive and brutally honest: "...but all of these encounters with hustlers were as much an expression of fear as of desire, and above all they were animated by curiosity. I was swallowing the sperm of strangers and this feast convinced me that I possessed all of these men. I was like one of those nearly insane saints who must take communion several times a day..."
So real, precisely expressed and profoundly learned...so much there to cause any number of people to bleed out the eyes.
Edmund White is nothing if not blunt, honest: sometimes maybe to a fault but "My Lives," as with much of what White has written, is profoundly observant and beautifully composed. Though White is of course a fine writer particularly when it has to do with his own life, I think that in the long run as an observer of life in all its forms and as a commentator of all he sees, White's greatest contribution both personally and cosmically is his remarkable ability to earn the trust and retain the friendship of those with whom he has remained emotionally tied for many, many years. If a man is judged by how many true friends he has made and kept then White is a truly great human being.

Edmund White is a Magical Biographer.......2006-11-07

Edmund White is a magical biographer. And, when it comes to writing his own autobiography, he is beyond compare. White's autobiography is breathtaking from the first paragraph. It is truly a work of genius.

Uneven Tales.......2006-07-02

Like the literary conceit on which the book is based, My Lives is all over the place both in the quality of its writing and in the quality of its insights. For long streches I felt almost resentful at White's rambling discourses on the females, friends, and foes in his life--alleviated by occasional flashes of almost lyrical beauty (such as his description of the Ile St. Louis in winter) and sociological insight. Much of the time I felt robbed at having paid for the book rather than being paid for what seemed like asynchronous therapy sessions like which my dispersed hours with the book seemed to feel.

I am still not quite sure how much of his narrative is whining and how much bemused narrative about his foibles as one who grew up in the pre-Stonewall era. No one seems to come off well, except perhaps his long-suffering current lover, about whom White maintains a virtual silence; and perhaps this is just as well.

A Brilliant Memoir.......2006-06-24

What sets this memoir apart from others I've read is the way White chose to write it. By dividing his book into chapters or sections that explore topics that he felt colored the life he's led, I feel that I know more about him than I ever would have had he chosen to start at his birth writing the events in the order that they happened. In these ten sections, White writes about topics that set the stage for who he became as in "My Shrinks", "My Father", and "My Mother". In other sections he writes about topics that were passions for him at different times in his life as in "My Europe", or "My Genet". In "My Hustlers", and "My Master" he explores his sexual preferences, whereas in "My Blondes" he discusses the type of men with whom he chooses to fall in love. The sections "My Women" and "My Friends" round him out as a person capable of giving and receiving affection and loyalty. All of these topics overlap within sections and the result is a clearer picture of who Edmund White is as an individual and as a writer.

Never in this book does White come across as the elder statesman or older gay male guru who has learned things in his life and now is ready to teach them to us the reader. It is so refreshing to see him as a person who knows that he hasn't rid himself of all his foibles and he comes across as more human because of it. He's never politically correct or ashamed of the things that he's done nor does he apologize for them as he shouldn't. He has always been and still remains a very sexual person in spite of his HIV status. Age (he's in his mid-sixties) hasn't turned him into a eunuch as evidenced by his passion for "T" in the section "My Master".

White's writing is always good, always fresh, and often brilliant. There are excerpts here that are as good or better than the first page of Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward Angel", or the excerpt on "Joey" in the beginning of James Baldwin's "Giovanni's Room". I won't tell you which ones they are; I'll let you find them yourself.

Average customer rating:

Brilliant
A Classic Biography
Best biography in English language in 20th century
When Irish Eyes Exile
Prolegomena to Ulysses

James Joyce (Oxford Lives)
Richard Ellmann
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195033817

Amazon.com

Although several biographers have thrown themselves into the breach since this magisterial book first appeared in 1959, none have come close to matching the late Richard Ellmann's achievement. To be fair, Ellmann does have some distinct advantages. For starters, there's his deep mastery of the Irish milieu--demonstrated not only in this volume but in his books on Yeats and Wilde. He's also an admirable stylist himself--graceful, witty, and happily unintimidated by his brilliant subjects. But in addition, Ellmann seems to have an uncanny grasp on Joyce's personality: his reverence for the Irishman's literary accomplishment is always balanced by a kind of bemused affection for his faults. Whether Joyce is putting the finishing touches on Ulysses, falling down drunk in the streets of Trieste, or talking dirty to his future wife via the postal service, Ellmann's account always shows us a genius and a human being--a daunting enough task for a fiction writer, let alone the poor, fact-fettered biographer.

Book Description

Richard Ellmann has revised and expanded his definitive work on Joyce's life to include newly discovered primary material, including details of a failed love affair, a limerick about Samuel Beckett, a dream notebook, previously unknown letters, and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant.......2007-02-13

For those of you interested in a biography of James Joyce that's as erudite as his works themselves, then Ellmann's "James Joyce" is most definitely for you. This is a product of years of interviews and correspondence with many of Joyce's friends and family members; and Ellmann's love for both the writer and the man radiate through every page. His sections on the key themes and events that inspired both "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake" are invaluable. Moreover, you'll find yourself chuckling a great deal of time, and even shedding a few tears, as I did. My only critique of the book, albeit fairly minor, is not so much directed at the author as it is at the publisher: there is little room in the margins for notes, as well as very sparse flyleaves; hence for those of you who like to engage a book with gushing pen in hand, then you'll find the layout of this book quite restraining, as I did. One might counter this critique, however, with the perhaps granted point that it leaves all the more canvas space on which to overlay layers and layers of brush strokes much needed when attempting to paint the life of this very complex, gifted, and charming man.

A Classic Biography.......2006-10-05

In all things about James Joyce, no one has exhibited more of an acute understanding of the man and his works than Richard Ellmann. He is the bridge by which readers who have not read Joyce or do not understand what they have read by him to the inner workings of the artist and his life.

This biography, "James Joyce" has been around for decades, virtually unchallenged. He presents to the reader all the facets of Joyce's life and personality. This is no mere star-gazing. Along with all the great things about Joyce, he also examines his weakness: his superstitions, his drinking, his occasional selfishnes, his sexual complexities, and his failure to really take care of his family. We get to see Joyce in all his dimensions and from several perspectives. That makes this book not only the best biography of James Joyce but one of the classic biographies of all time.

Best biography in English language in 20th century.......2006-06-20

Richard Ellmann's biography of James Joyce is hands down among the three best or the best biography written in the 20th century. For anyone with a serious interest in Joyce or his writings, will truly enjoy getting to know Joyce and his writings through this book.

I've read maybe a few thousand reviews of other titles on this website but this is the first book I've felt I needed to comment on. I comment mainly because I noted that two reviewers gave this book "4 stars". What unmitigated gall!

When Irish Eyes Exile.......2005-10-11

Richard Ellmann's biography is the most definitive and complete examination of James Joyce that has been written. This extensive work examines Joyce's life from his birth to his death. Ellmann's narrative derives from Joyce's letters as well as accounts from Joyce's brother, Stanislaus. The book is most revealing in offering an understanding of the process it took for Joyce to come up with his most monumental works, ULYSSES AND FINNEGANS WAKE. Ellmann states that Joyce intentionally made it difficult for anyone to understand what he wrote. He wanted to keep his critics, academics and scholars, guessing of what significance his nonsensical gibberish creation represented. In addition, Ellmann intertwines events that occurred in Joyce's life that show how they closely resemble the characters in the works he produced, such as his early work, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN.

James Joyce most likely can be considered a "starving artist." He would go without a new pair of shoes until they wore down to the soles, but looked debonair and sophisticated with non-matching suits. In the beginning, he aspired to be a work within the realms of Jesuit studies, but later opted for a writing career that would take him from Trieste, Paris, and Zurich. Joyce struggled with poverty through out his life even as his most famous works were published. Monetary problems and health conditions that affected his eyesight never hindered his creative process. If he lost his eyesight, he probably would have continued to write blind. Joyce appeared to be an eccentric and stubborn man. However, Ellmann shows a caring and supporting man who loved his wife and children, and most of all, his father, John Stanislaus Joyce.

In terms to history and literature, Ellmann constantly references Joyce's fascination with Shakespeare, ancient civilization and history. This is best displayed in ULYSSES, but one significant footnote is that he did not appear to care for American history. He makes a minute reference to Ulysses S. Grant in ULYSSES, but he did not even know who the man was; Joyce loathed the United States. Also, Ellmann offers a birds-eye view of what his cohorts thought of his work. Gertrude Stein as well as Ernest Hemingway praised and envied Joyce's contributions to Modernism.

Ellmann examines a tremendous amount of information within his narrative. When one completes JAMES JOYCE, what else do you need to know about this genuine writer who used his craft as a means of getting back home, but never quite made it there? But he preferred Zurich and its snow-capped mountains as home rather than the complexities of his former Dublin. JAMES JOYCE is the springboard one needs when beginning a study of Joyce the man and his works, which should begin with PORTRAIT and ending with WAKE.

Prolegomena to Ulysses.......2005-06-14

I would agree that this is a masterful biography but be warned that it is neither lightweight nor a short read. What I would add is the thought that it it is wonderfully helpful in preparing oneself for a read of the major novel itself. That's something I had begun a dozen times in the last forty years, my furthest-on bookmark being about page 200. With this and the New Bloomsday Book, I finally read Ulysses through. It is an astonishing literary achievement, just as they say, and before your reading is over you've got to do it or it'll be like missing Hamlet. Reading this first is a good head start.

Eminent Georgians: The Lives of King George V, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby, and Lady Astor

Average customer rating:

Intriguing lives, lazily written
Lytton Lite

Eminent Georgians: The Lives of King George V, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby, and Lady Astor
John Halperin
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

John Halperin illuminates the connection between four fascinating people and the intersecting era in which they lived -the second "Georgian" age, the period in England between the two world wars.

Customer Reviews:

Intriguing lives, lazily written.......2004-11-26

This certainly isn't Lytton Strachey. Like Strachey and Richard Holmes, however, Halperin well realizes the inherent great enjoyability of very short biographies of extremely interesting people. There seems to be almost no original research here, and Halperin is willing to make an extremely shallow and lazy transition to an anecdote just to squeeze it in, but he does write with grace (and has an eye for a great story). Oddly, there's a running theme throughout the book: the perfidy of what Halperin extremely loosely calls "treason," although what he means by treason seems so broad at times as to be almost meaningless. The best lives here are of the stodgy George V and the hilariously irreverent Nancy Astor, because with both Halperin seems really to have a new angle he wants to bring out; while his willingness to applaud the late king for his steadfastness and decency as compared to his eldest son's thorough rottenness, it does not seem to occur to Halperin that Edward VIII's character might be in part due to his parents' legendarily neglectful cold and neglectful care. Halperin's extremely heavyhanded evaluations of Elizabeth Bowen's novels are also a bit puzzling, although Bowen's exceptionally eventful life and character make up for his judgmentalism towards her fiction.

Lytton Lite.......2001-08-17

John Halperin takes Lytton Strachey as his model and provides four short lives of people he views as emblematic of the "second Georgian" era - King Geroge V himself, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby and Nancy Astor. The results are interesting without being particularly memorable. Halperin tells his stories in a plain documentary fashion, without much analysis and with none of the mordant wit or strong opinions of Strachey's nasty little classic. Such a straightforward approach works best if bolsered by extensive research, but the slim bibliography indicates a newspaper profile rather than an original and insightful work. All this being said, Bowen, Philby and Astor are interesting enough as people to making reading "Eminent Georgians" worthwhile. As for the good King George, it will take a much more persuasive writer to bring that admirable but dull monarch to life on the page.

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Willa Cather: Double Lives
Hermione Lee
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0679736492
Release Date: 1991-11-05

Book Description

Cather is usually read as a nostalgic celebrator of the American past. Lee explores a stranger and more complex Cather, whose life and work are rife with split identities, sexual conflicts and stoic fatalism. Illustrated.

Snapshots of Bloomsbury: The Private Lives of Virginia Woolf And Vanessa Bell

Average customer rating:

Intimate and stylish
I'm in between

Snapshots of Bloomsbury: The Private Lives of Virginia Woolf And Vanessa Bell
Maggie Humm
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0813537061

Customer Reviews:

Intimate and stylish.......2006-08-08

I really enjoyed this book. I could pore over the fashions, the interior decoration - it satisfied my desire to see all the details! At the same time, I got a sense of the passage of time in Virginia and Vanessa's lives. Read as a companion to any of Woolf's novels, I think the book would also convey a sense of the writing process.

It evokes the time and place beautifully, and the text is not intrusive: the images are allowed to take centre stage as works of art in their own right.

Fine choice, Sweetpea!

I'm in between.......2006-04-17

Nutty yet poignant

Have we found the smoking gun here? I doubt it

Bloomsbury has a posse!

Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing up with Alice Munro

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Lives of Mothers and Daughters: Growing up with Alice Munro
Sheila Munro
Manufacturer: McClelland & Stewart
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0771066694
Release Date: 2001-04-24

Book Description

“So much of what I think I know – and I think I know more about my mother’s life than almost any daughter could know – is refracted through the prism of her writing. Such is the power of her fiction that sometimes it even feels as though I’m living inside an Alice Munro story.”

The millions of people around the world who read Alice Munro’s work are enthralled by her insight into the human heart. Consider, then, what it would be like to have a mother who was so all-knowing. Worse, if that mother were world-famous as you were growing up and trying to make your own way as a writer, while you yourself followed in her footsteps, raising a family and trying to write on the side.

That is Sheila Munro’s dilemma, and it gives this book special fascination for anyone interested in their own relationship with their own mother, or their own daughter.

This book is, in effect, an intimate, affectionate biography of Alice Munro. It describes in a way that only a close relative could, the details of the family background. We follow the family history from the Laidlaws who left Scotland in the early 19th century, to Alice Munro’s birth in 1931, her early years and marriage all the way to the current family, including Alice Munro’s grandchildren. One of the many fascinations of the book is that faithful readers of Alice’s work – and are there any other kind? – will find constant echoes of settings, situations, and characters that occur in her fiction. So this book is not only a fascinating biography of Alice Munro, it also provides an informative commentary to the stories we all know.

But Sheila Munro goes further. As a writer growing up in the shadow of a writing mother, she’s able to write frankly and personally about being a daughter and about being a writer. With the publication of this book – richly embellished with scores of family photographs – Sheila Munro has established herself as a skilled and successful author in her own right.

• Includes dozens of fascinating Munro family snapshots scattered throughout the text
• Full of real-life details that will fascinate any Alice Munro fan

Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand

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Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand
Benita Eisler
Manufacturer: Counterpoint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1582433496

Book Description

A modern exploration of the life and legacy of the nineteenth century's most infamous and inspirational woman, the always ingenious and occasionally incognito, George Sand

Who was George Sand? She was the first famous Frenchwoman celebrated throughout Europe who wasn't either a saint or a king's mistress. She was also the first woman in Europe to become a bestselling novelist. But her fame is inseparable from her notoriety: the scandal of leaving a husband and child, setting up in Paris with an eighteen year- old lover, liaisons and friendships with men of talent and even genius: de Musset, Chopin, Balzac, and Flaubert. Politically engaged, Sand was literally, "there at the revolution," those of 1831 and 1848, reporting, analyzing, denouncing, exhorting. She believed always in Progress as she did in Love, though she was doomed to be betrayed in both.

Book Description

Dressed to the nines and draped with diamonds, Danielle Steel is America's favorite author. She has enchanted readers with each of her 44 bestselling novels-- and has a total of 350 million books in print! Now, this stunning, uncensored biography reveals how closely Danielle's fiction is based on real life-- the rich men, the dangerous men, the heartbreak, the struggles, the triumphs....and the secrets too dark to tell.Read all about:* Her cruel, lonely childhood which became the inspiration for her novel Loving* Her long-hidden marriage to a convicted rapist, the scandalous real story readers will recognize in her novel Now and Forever* Her third husband, a handsome heroin addict, who, like the protagonist of Remembrance, broke her heart and nearly ruined her life* Her lavish spending and opulent lifestyle in a San Francisco mansion* The tragic death of her nineteen-year-old son in 1997* The break-up of her fourth marriage-- and the new man in Danielle Steel's lifeWith eight pages of photos!

Customer Reviews:

A very good read.......2005-12-03

This is a great book. Danielle Steel is not just some rich arthur in her mansion in San Francisco. She is a compasionate person who actually feels and gets involved with the less fortunate. I didn't feel that this book was slanted either way. I think it is a fair portrait of one's life. Definitely an intestersting read.

Will I ever get this book???.......2005-07-28

Sorry, but I can't rate this book fairly as I still don't have it. It's been almost 5 weeks since I ordered it, and I'm still waiting. Several complaints, and I got a 5 dollar discount on my next order. Why would I order anything else when I have to wait so long to get what I was promised in 2 weeks? Next time I will buy at the local book store. Yes, I will pay more but at least I will have the opportunity to read it before I die of old age.

Fans, please chill out!.......2004-01-24

I have to say it: I am not a Danielle Steel fan in the strict sense of the word. I find her prose repetitive, her dénouements fairly sugarcoated and her writing rather low-brow in general, especially for a writer who scoffs at the romance writer definition and would like to be compared with Judith Krantz or Sidney Sheldon. And yet, there is something about her books that keeps me coming back for more. I especially enjoy her period works, like "Vanished," "Zoya," or "Crossings" and I have to say she has a knack at making a good portrayal of the times in which her books are set. The plots are intricate enough and one can almost invariably bond and relate to her characters without difficulty. As to this unauthorized biography, "The Lives of Danielle Steel," it has helped me understand more about the persona who is behind the fiction. The research on the author's life is very thorough and it also makes some good points about her fiction. This book doesn't intend to tarnish Danielle Steel's image, all the opposite: it helps her fans discover her as a human being. It's true that it gouges up a lot of rubbish about her past but in the end it was she who took the decision to marry ex-cons and drug-addicts. We all make mistakes and have to live them down as best we can. I found the book as entertaining as any of Steel's books and, as I have already said, it helped me relate better to Danielle Steel now that I know that she's human.

Others Missing the Point.......2001-12-11

All of these negative reviewers are missing the point. This book was written to show the interesting parallels between Danielle Steels life and the characters in her book. The book doesn't go out of its way to say that Danielle is a bad person - it's just saying, "look, her books are a lot like her life." You people should just relax and enjoy the parallels between life and fiction. This is a great book, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I'm also a Danielle Steel fan - I've read all of her books - and I now look back at them with a different eye, which is fun!

Complete Junk!!!.......2001-05-25

I have been reading Danielle Steel novels for several years, including the book she wrote about her son's life, and this overdrawn gossip column, The Lives of Danielle Steel, is complete junk. I wouldn't be shocked at all if the authors of this book never even read a Danielle Steel novel, which I consider "real" fiction. If you are a true fan of Danielle Steel don't even bother to read this book because it tells nothing about the author's real life.

Average customer rating:

Delightful, brilliant literary biography
Concise and Eloquent, Read This One First
A very pleasant read
A beautifully written biography
Beguiling introduction to Jane Austen

Jane Austen (Penguin Lives)
Carol Shields
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0670894885
Release Date: 2001-02-15

Amazon.com

It's a perennial source of frustration to Jane Austen's admirers that so little is known about her quiet existence as an unmarried woman seeking an outlet for her ferocious intelligence in genteel, rural England at the turn of the 19th century. Carol Shields, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Stone Diaries, has already proved herself a writer who can convey large truths with an economical amount of material, which makes her an excellent choice as Austen's biographer. Shields's brief but cogent text makes persuasive connections between Austen's novels and her life (the plethora of unsatisfactory mothers, for example, and the obvious sympathy for women barred from marriage by poverty and from careers by social custom), but she never forgets that fiction expresses first and foremost an artist's response to the world around her, not actual personal history. In fact, Shields argues, it may well have been Austen's sense that the novels she loved to read didn't provide a very accurate picture of the society she knew that fired her own work. Her merciless portraits of the economic underpinnings of marriage and family relations are in many ways more "realistic" than male writers' dramas of battle or females' fantasies of romantic bliss. As for her life's lack of incident, its one major disruption--her parents' move to Bath--prompted a nine-year silence from their formerly prolific daughter. Shields gleans as much as she can from Austen's letters, while remembering that they too gave voice to a persona, not the whole truth, in order to delineate a quirky, sometimes cranky, sometimes catty woman who was by no means the perfect maiden lady her surviving relatives sought to immortalize. An Austen biography will never be as much fun as an Austen novel, but Shields does a remarkably entertaining job of discerning the links between the two. --Wendy Smith

Book Description

A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist celebrates the life of one of the most renowned and beloved female novelists of all time.

In her brilliant fictional biography, The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields created an astonishing portrait of Daisy Goodwill Flett, a modern woman struggling to understand her place in her own life. With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years.

Jane Austen reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With her forceful insight and gentle wit, she was the ultimate chronicler of the mores and manners of her time as well as a groundbreaking author who would influence many of our greatest contemporary novelists.

Who was this woman that created both characters that leap off the page and entertaining plots, yet managed to quietly challenge a strict social order? What gave her the motivation to continue writing when women were excluded from the publishing world? In this compelling and passionate biography, Carol Shields explores the life of this amazing woman: from her early family life in Stevenson, to her later years at Bath, her broken engagement, and her tumultuous relationship with her sister Cassandra.

Customer Reviews:

Delightful, brilliant literary biography.......2007-05-10

I decided to read Carol Shields' biography "Jane Austen" for two reasons: first, because I knew about and admired the biographer; and second, because I hoped that reading a biography about Jane Austen would help me better comprehend and appreciate her novels. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy reading Jane Austen. I am just not as crazy about her as many bright, highly educated women I know. When I heard that Carol Shields, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Stone Diaries" had written a highly acclaimed biography of Austen, I jumped at the chance to reeducate myself.

In the beginning Shields asks many questions. "How does art emerge? How does art come from common clay, in this case a vicar's self-educated daughter, all but buried in rural Hampshire? Who was she really? And who exactly is her art designed to please? One person? Two or three? Or an immense, wide, and unknown audience that buzzes with an altered frequency through changing generations, its impact subtly augmented in the light of newly evolved tastes and values?" (p. 5-6) Throughout the biography, Shields does an amazingly delightful and scholarly job of exploring these themes. In the end, she states: "What is known of Jane Austen's life will never be enough to account for the greatness of her novels, but the point of literary biography is to throw light on a writer's works, rather than combing the works to re-create the author." (p.175) Obviously, this was Shields' intent, and in this reviewer's estimation, she succeeds completely.

This biography was an absolute joy to read. It is short--under 200 pages. I read it in one sitting, never once feeling that the details overwhelmed. My interest never faded. Now, I find myself thinking about the many vivid characters in Austen's novels and wanting to read them again in a new light.

It has been over twenty years since I last read any of Austen's books, so detailed familiarity with her novels is not a prerequisite to understanding this biography or finding pleasure in its remarkable insights.

Shields is an extraordinary author in her own right. Her prose is clear, articulate, creative, often fun, and always on the mark. It is clear that she has a keen appreciation for Jane Austen's literary style and a deep desire to understand the woman who created these magical works or art. I am enthusiastic after reading this biography and recommend it highly to anyone who wants a better appreciation of Austen, her person, her period, and her novels.

Concise and Eloquent, Read This One First.......2006-08-30

Carol Shields' excellent introduction to Jane Austen provides wonderful insight into Jane Austen's life and novels -- and the relationship between them. Notable topics include marriage, family relationships, treatament of "current events", character analysis for the Austen heroines, and several insightful sections regarding Austen's men. One very interesting idea posed was to what extent Austen's life (or any author's) informs and shapes the novels, or how much she kept the two separate, or in fact created an "ideal" life, one she never quite realized. The book covers all of this and more, eloquently, and in less than 200 pages. Shields' love of Austen is evident on every page. Discussions of this nature necessarily contain "spoilers" -- if you haven't read Austen's novels, and want to be surprised, read the novels first, then come back to the biographies. You will finish this particular biography satisfied AND hungry for more, starting with another reading of Austen's novels. The list of sources provides an excellent resource for additional reading on Austen's life. Bravo.

A very pleasant read.......2006-04-20

Carol Shields has an easy writing style and obviously adores her subject, making this biography a very pleasant read. We get a brief overview of her life, education and living conditions. I was a little disappointed that there was not more (more about her writing habit and more about her relationships with friends and family) - and was a little irritated by the many assumptions made ("she must have felt ..."). Doing a little research later I discovered that there is in fact very little information about Jane Austen.

A beautifully written biography.......2006-03-22

A wonderful and short biography of Jane Austen's rather enigmatic life. Carol Shields vibrant prose brings Jane Austen to life with a study of the correspondence between Jane and her sister, family biographies of the famous writer, and insights from her novels.

Apparently Jane Austen wrote P & P, which was first entitled "First Impressions" at the age of 21. It was her family's favorite and her most publicly acclaimed novel. When Jane was a teenager, her father, a clergyman, presented her with a notebook bearing the title "Effusions of Fancy by a very Young Lady Consisting of Tales in a Style entirely new" along with a writing desk when she turned 19. In the recent remake of Mansfield Park, Edmond suggests to Fanny that she use this title for her stories which he will help to self-publish. So, it is clear that the film recasts Mansfield's Fanny Price as a cross between the sensitive and pious Miss Price and the comic and witty Jane Austen herself.

There were also wonderful stories about how Jane Austen wrote a scathing letter to the publishers who had held Northanger Abby without publication for 10 years with the thinly veiled pen name of MAD (Mrs. Ashton Dennis). From the content of her letters and books, she was obviously a very funny, or at least ironic, lady.

Beguiling introduction to Jane Austen.......2006-03-08

Although I have read four of Jane Austen's novels, I know very little about her and have read no other books on her. But this accessible, beautifully written introduction to her life made me want to read a more in depth study. I would highly recommend it.

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