Average customer rating:
- Shoddy treatment of such valuable things!
- Great insight into an author who didn't write enough!
- Disintegrating letters.
- The Best Source For Austen-ites Ever!
- A Must Have for the English Regency reference shelf
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Jane Austen's Letters
Jane Austen
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Jane Austen: A Life
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ASIN: 0192832972 |
Amazon.com
Jane Austen famously labeled her literary ambit a "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory." Luckily, her personal travels and those of her family were slightly more extensive, otherwise we should be without her letters. Not only should every Janeite possess them, but also every connoisseur of correspondence. Austen's wit is ubiquitous--even though some protest it edges into waspishness. E. M. Forster, for example, described the letters between Austen and her beloved sister, Cassandra, as "the whinnying of harpies."
On September 18, 1796, she tells Cassandra, "What dreadful Hot weather we have!--It keeps one in a continual state of Inelegance.--If Miss Pearson should return with me, pray be careful not to expect too much Beauty..." The dashes and capitalization alone make one long for the days before stylistic rules had so cemented. As for the sentiments! Austen paces her monologues to perfection, making the comic and ironic most out of the smallest incidents. Still, her frustration does occasionally emerge. "I am forced to be abusive," she implodes to Cassandra, "for want of a subject, having nothing really to say." Jane Austen has more than enough to say for lovers of literature and the cultural pinprick.
Book Description
Jane Austen's letters afford a unique insight into the daily life of the novelist: intimate and gossipy, observant and informative, they bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events with a freshness unparalleled in modern biographies. Above all we recognize the unmistakable voice of the author of Pride and Prejudice, witty and amusing as she describes the social life of town and country, thoughtful and constructive when writing about the business of literary composition. R. W. Chapman's ground-breaking edition of the collected Letters first appeared in 1932, and a second edition followed twenty years later. For this third edition Deidre Le Faye has added new material that has come to light since 1952, and re- ordered the letters into their correct chronological sequence. She has provided discreet and full annotation to each letter, including its provenance, and information on the watermarks, postmarks, and other physical details of the manuscripts, together with new biographical, topographical, and general indexes.
Customer Reviews:
Shoddy treatment of such valuable things!.......2007-09-10
I dare not argue with the importance of Jane Austen's letters, nor with the pleasure to be obtained by reading them. This edition, however, is the poorest-bound book I have ever seen! I just received it in the mail, and the copyright page has already fallen out. The margins are equally dismal, and I am afraid one reading will finish the whole thing off. Buy this edition if you must, but find a better copy if you can.
Great insight into an author who didn't write enough!.......2007-08-30
I think all Austen fans lament her early death - only six completed novels just isn't enough!
These letters do help fill that gap. Austen was smart, honest, funny; you can hear her voice so clearly in these letters. It is a shame that her sister destroyed most of her letters before she died (since she thought they were too indecent or personal or just downright mean!), but I allow Austen SOME privacy! These letters are just wonderful.
The only slight drawback is that, as a lay person, the layout was a little cumbersome. I'm not a Regency expert, so I needed to keep flipping back to the explanatory notes to understand the language. That flipping became annoying at times. I would prefer to have the notes at the bottom of the page so I could scan them without leaving the body of the letter. Just a personal preference thing, though.
Disintegrating letters........2007-05-19
I had already read Jane Austen's letters but wanted to have my own copy. They give a fascintating insight into her life, although somewhat limited by the fact that her sister Cassandra burnt all of Jane's leters to her after Jane's death. Unfortunately the copy I have recently bought is poorly bound and the pages started coming loose the first time I opened it. I just couldn't be bothered returning the book from New Zealand.
The Best Source For Austen-ites Ever!.......2006-03-15
This is the best edition of Austen's letters ever published. It includes recently discovered letters from Jane Austen or about Jane Austen. It also provides details regarding the postmarks on the letters and an index (with description!) of the many people, servants and friends in Austen's life. While this book doesn't provide much cultural context or criticism, serious students of Jane Austen will learn more about Austen's authorial project and her daily life. While we can never know Austen as a person, we can get a sense of her life, her family, and the pressures she faced on an intimate level. It is interesting to find the paralells between Austen's letters and her novels. Astute readers will find that Austen was witty and sarcastic outside of her novels as well. I used this book as a resource in a college class in which we only read Austen's novels, and found her Letters to open up the texts in suprising ways. An excellent tool that should be part of your Austen collection!
A Must Have for the English Regency reference shelf.......2002-09-25
Primary sources are always the best in understanding the mindset of a period. Here we have a thick collection of Jane Austen's letters, which have been very well annotated by the editor. The contrast between the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson (who lived in the same period, published by the famous courtesan in 1825) are hilarious. Witty but staidly Anglican Jane at one point savagely attacks the very high aristocrats romping their scandalous way through Harriette's world, that "race of Pagets". Jane Austen's letters let us have a glimpses of what daily life in the English gentry and aristocratic class was like in Regency England; seeemingly trivial details such as the buying of Wedgwood china with the personal crest, buying the breakfast set separate to the other china sets (longing to see what a Regency breakfast set looked like! The breakfast set is mentioned in Sense and Sensibility) are actually very difficult to find out about, it is not something historians generally write about. The notes by the editor are fascinating and could lead to further research, for example how did one lord prove his title after being a Dublin potboy? And the gentleman who divorced his wife after the proper lady decided to become a professional actress...usually it was the other way around, the actress became a proper lady! The biographical details added by the editor on various gentry/aristocratic families mentioned in Jane Austen's letters are very tantalising.
Amazon.com
Emma Thompson spent five years translating Jane Austen's work to the screen. Fans of the film will treasure this beautiful volume that includes her screenplay, diaries of the writing and the filming, and many gorgeous color pictures from the film.
Book Description
This engaging and beautiful book includes the complete Academy Award-winning script and Thompson's own diaries detailing the production of the film, reviewed by Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic as "vivid, funny, and gamy." 88 photos including 36 in color.
Customer Reviews:
Emma Thompson's dazzling adaptation of Jane Austen's novel.......2001-11-28
If you read Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" before or after seeing the 1996 film version then I think it is pretty easy to conclude that Emma Thompson's Oscar for Best Screenplay adaptation was richly deserved. After writing and performing a series of short skits for British television, Thompson was approached by producer Lindsay Doran to write the screenplay. Thompson began by dramatizing every scene in the novel, which resulted in 300 hand written pages to be followed by 14 drafts as the 1811 novel was crafted into the final script. The result was a script that manages to be not only romantic and funny, but also romantic and funny in the best Austen sense of both words.
Be aware that this is the Original Script, not to be confused with the Shooting Script. This should be clear as soon as you beginning reading, because originally Thompson had the scene shifting back and forth between Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor/John and Fanny Dashwood (credit for this revision must go, I believe, to Film Editor Tim Squyres, who recut the scene so that we get all of one side and then the other instead of alternating back and forth as in the original script). Overall the strengths of Thompson's script are in two main directions. First, she manages to convey the scope of the novel in a two-hour screenplay, no mean task. Second, the little details she adds to Austen's story are simply marvelous. For example, her use of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 ("Let me not the marriage of true minds"), which Marianne and Willoughby share to their great mutual delight and which Marianne repeats standing in the rain looking at Willoughby's new estate. In fact, Thompson revised the first scene to make it even better, having Willoughby misquote a key word in an elegant bit of foreshadowing. Thompson also makes one nice little change at the end. While Austen has Elinor bolt from the room to cry outside during the happy ending. Thompson creates a wonderful moment by having her stay in the room and having the rest of her family flee. There are not too many scenes where you are crying and laughing at the same time, but Thompson certainly created one (and has the added virtue of relying on herself as an actress to nail the performance as well). All of these are marvelous examples of playing to the strength of the cinema to bring Austen's novel to the screen.
But we get much more than just the screenplay in this volume, because Thompson includes excerpts from her diaries kept during both the writing of the screenplay and the actual production of the film. It would be nice if there was more insight into what she was thinking when writing the screenplay as I am always interested in how decisions were made and where inspiration comes from, but Thompson makes up for that with her little tales of working with director Ang Lee and the rest of the cast in making the film. Finally, in the Appendices, there is a very choice little treat, namely Imogen Stubbs' Prize-Winning Letter, written to Elinor from Lucy. Do not worry; by the time you read it you will understand why it is so hysterical. There is also a list of the fine homes and estates where "Sense and Sensibility" was filmed if you happen to be roaming around England and are interested in looking for such things.
A look inside the making of the film.......2000-11-21
Most for-sale screenplays are just that -- screenplays. Emma Thompson, who wrote the screenplay for the delightful Jane Austen film "Sense and Sensibility," chose to include journal entries throughout the filming of the movie as well, in addition to the winning entry of a contest to see who could write the best letter from Fanny to Elinor.
There is wit in the descriptions and the photos, all well-captured. The journal entries are entertaining and a good look into the making of a movie. Although be forewarned -- because they dress like the characters of S&S, they do not talk like them. There is definitely some verbal crudeness in the book, men and women alike, but if you can overlook that (or are used to it) then this book will be a delightful read for any Jane Austen fan.
A fascinating look at a remarkable film........2000-07-07
There are three separate parts to this fine volume; introduction, script and diaries. The producer of the film, Lindsay Doran, opens the door for us with her wonderful introduction. At age 13, she was determined that not only was "Jane Austen a very stupid writer," but also she would "never, never read one of her stupid books again."
Fortunately for the rest of the world, Ms. Doran changed her mind, and some twenty-five years after that first erroneous conclusion, has brought us this wonderfully witty, and extremely faithful film version of this first novel by Austen. As producer of the Kenneth Branagh/Emma Thompson film, DEAD AGAIN, she became acquainted with the woman who was not only a phenomenal actress, but also a gifted writer-one with a sense of humor and a strong romantic bent. These two qualities had proven to be the stumbling block over nearly ten years of searching for the right scriptwriter for Sense and Sensibility.
It took nearly seven years to come up with something close to a shooting script, sandwiched as it had to be between Thompson's many award-winning acting chores. Serendipity was obviously at work, however, and eventually, a budget was established, and casting accomplished.
Many of the actors Emma had envisioned in various roles had participated in a read-through the year prior to the filming; they were all in the film, in those same roles.
While the Dashwood ladies are all suitable beautiful, it is the men who are truly gorgeous. ("Repellently so," writes Ms. Thompson in the diary portion, referring to Hugh Grant. "He's much prettier than I am.") With his look-alike Richard Lumsden, they are the brothers Ferrar, Edward and Richard, with Greg Wise as the fickle Willoughby. Alan Rickman (be still my heart!) brings maturity and virility to the role of Colonel Brandon. The sets and costumes are sumptuous.
Interspersed with the actual shooting script and the diaries are some 50 photographs, 36 of them in luscious color. One script looks pretty much like another, but this one allows Ms. Thompson's wry wit to shine, especially in some of the non-spoken words. Of course, not every scene from the book could be included; the movie would have been more than six hours had they been. But the essentials are here, along with all the major characters. Providing testimony to just how perspicacious was the choice of writer is the number of awards garnered by Thompson for this, her first film script.
The diaries portion begin with a production meeting on January 15, 1995 and continue through July 9 of that year. A very small mention is made of Hugh Grant's visit to California, where he'd gone for his next film project after the completion of filming his scenes in England. A final two pages describes the 'location' houses chosen to represent those lived in by the families in the novel.
It may come as somewhat of a surprise to some readers to discover rather explicit language in the diaries. In addition to an apparent fascination with the alimentary process, our Emma has a bit of a potty-mouth, as do some of the gentleman involved, and their words are recorded, one presumes unhappily, all too accurately. They seem curiously jarring and out of place in a book otherwise devoted to the pristine words of Jane Austen.
Nevertheless, this is a lovely, hefty book; one which will bring the reader back to it time and again. There is always a new and enjoyable nugget to be mined from its various depths.
Great marriage of screenplay and journal writing.......2000-02-28
The screenplay itself is a must-read for anyone wanting an education in bringing a well-loved story to life. Emma Thompson does an ingenius job of crafting scenes that are faithful to Austen's original while inventing more that add character development and plot intrigue. I especially like her diary, though. For those who wonder what to include in a memoir of an experience, this journal is a rich model of self-disclosure and humor. I heartily recommend it!
Excellent Book!.......2000-01-04
I truly enjoyed this work by Emma Thompson. Not only is the screenplay included, with pictures, but also there are diary entries by Thompson that give insights into the making of the movie. If you loved this movie, you should read this book. I really enjoyed it.
Book Description
Explains Austen's methods, motivations, and morals
The fun and easy way(r) to understand and enjoy Jane Austen
Want to know more about Jane Austen? This friendly guide gives the scoop on her life, works, and lasting impact on our culture. It chronicles the events of her brief life, examines each of her novels, and looks at why her stories - of women and marriage, class and money, scandal and hypocrisy, emotion and satire - still have meaning for us today.
Discover
* Why Austen is so popular
* The impact on manners, courtships, and dating
* Love and life in Austen's world
* Her life and key influences
* Her most memorable characters
Customer Reviews:
A Bon Bon for Austen Fans.......2007-09-24
I found this book utterly delightful. The author is an academic with real expertise on Jane Austen and her writings; the delight is her witty, accessible style. She takes the reader on a journey that gives real insights into: Georgian England and English gentry; the Austen family; contemporary English events; primogeniture; flirting and dancing; and more, then shows how these topics show up, albeit subtly, in Austen's writings.
I am thoroughly enjoying my prerusal of the book and I'm glad that I bought it as it is defintely something I want on my bookshelf. I recommend it as a must have for Austen fans.
Feasting on Austen.......2007-06-25
Jane Austen for Dummies will leave a contented smile on the face and satiated delight in the belly of even the most discriminating Austen afficionado! Joan Klingel Ray's scholarship is evident, but the manner in which she doles out both the essential and the trivial ingredients of all manner of things Regency and Austen will satiate any literary taste bud. I loved the organization of the text and the index is fabulous. I would love to see this book "taught"; it would enhance immeasurably the certain enjoyment of reading any of Asuten's novels.
Think You Know Jane Austen?.......2007-05-19
You may be surprised to learn how much you don't know about Jane Austen.
Glance over the Table of Contents of Jane Austen for Dummies and you
can't help but envy Professor Joan Klingel Ray's students. She manages to
present in an informative and very entertaining manner Jane Austen's
life, works, literary predecessors, legacy, and so much more. This book
is for everyone who reads Jane Austen - and for those who don't. Think
Jane Austen is only for ladies who sip tea? Think Jane Austen favored the
aristocracy? Think Jane Austen lived a sad, lonely life and never
traveled? Read this book and discover the truth of the matter. You can
buy countless books about Jane Austen and spend the next decade or so
reading them, or you can get just this one.
Like taking a college class in Jane Austen, but less time committment!.......2007-05-08
The main reason I bought and read Jane Austen for Dummies was the author's credentials as a College Professor (with lifetime teaching guarantee at her college), and 3-time President of JASNA (Jane Austen Society of North America). Since reading it, I feel almost as if I had had the pleasure of (and time for!) taking a class from Professor Ray. It is my first book ABOUT Jane Austen, as opposed to BY Jane Austen, and I expected, as I have found with other FOR DUMMIES books, that I would learn what I wanted to know, painlessly, and be thoroughly entertained in the reading. I was not disappointed; to put it less ironically (which technique Miss Austen specializes in, as you will learn from Dr. Ray!) I was delighted with the book; you will be too. Don't hesitate, go ahead and buy it -- It's a great book!
Highly Recommended!.......2007-05-08
Jane Austen for Dummies is a delightful and helpful companion volume both for readers (and movie-goers) who are new to Austen and for those of us who read her six wonderful novels again and again! Joan Klingel Ray, who teaches university-level Austen courses and who, as former president of JASNA*, has given many well-received lectures on Austen throughout the U.S. and Canada, is the perfect guide to lead us through the world of Austen and her novels. Written in an entertaining style but based on her extensive knowledge and scholarship, Ray's book gives us context and a richer understanding of Austen's life and writings. Do you want to know about the "rules" of flirting, courtship, and marriage in Austen's day? The often precarious position of gentlewomen? The significance of primogeniture and entail? Or, for today's readers planning a literary pilgrimage--which sites associated with Austen can be visited? And how to get there? You'll find lots of information and pleasure within the covers of this book. Highly recommended for individual purchasers/readers and for library collections!! (*JASNA is the Jane Austen Society of North America.)
Book Description
'I doubt whether it would be possible to mention any author of note, whose personal obscurity was so complete.' James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir of his aunt Jane Austen was published in 1870, over fifty years after her death. Together with the shorter recollections of James Edward's two sisters, Anna Lefroy and Caroline Austen, the Memoir remains the prime authority for her life and continues to inform all subsequent accounts. These are family memories, the record of Jane Austen's life shaped and limited by the loyalties, reserve, and affection of nieces and nephews recovering in old age the outlines of the young aunt they had each known. They still remembered the shape of her bonnet and the tone of her voice, and their first-hand accounts bring her vividly before us. Their declared partiality also raises fascinating issues concerning biographical truth, and the terms in which all biography functions. This edition brings together for the first time these three memoirs, and also includes Jane's brother Henry Austen's 'Biographical Notice' of 1818 and his lesser known 'Memoir' of 1833, making a unique biographical record.
Customer Reviews:
Enjoying Jane.......2007-09-08
If you enjoy Jane Austen novels, you really should read this memoir from her nephew. It is like meeting his aunt and adds a special touch to the reading of her novels.
Not what I hoped it would be.......2007-04-26
I've read this book three times (all three times while the electricity was out and only a lantern or flashlight at hand) and all three times I've been totally disappointed. This book gives no insight. Nothing interesting crops up. It's boring. But I give it three stars because at least it exists. I suggest if forced to read by candlelight, you turn to the Bronte bios.
All Personal memoirs brought together, nice to read with the letters.......2005-10-08
Primary sources to Jane Austen's life are few and far between. This version includes the few personal family accounts which were published. James Edward Austen-Leighs is the largest of these, although still not very substantial. His two sisters also published them.
This includes four memoirs of Aunt Jane, all written much after her death by Caroline Austen, Anna Lefroy, James Austen_leigh and Henry Austen. Some are better reads than others but they add to the sparse amount of biographical and family information on Austen.
Handily, there is a family tree provided as well as a chronology. There are also useful explanatory notes.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone but a keen Austen fan - one of the excellent biographies available are much more readable and entertaining. For an avid Janeite this book provides a substantial source of primary information. I would highly recommend reading this with the collected letters which have been collected and edited by Claire Tomalin.
It is a nice collection and it is great to see all these published, as they ought to be together in one volume.
Book Description
This illuminating, entertaining, up-to-date companion is the only general guide to Jane Austen, her work, and her world. Josephine Ross explores the literary scene during the time Austen's works first appeared: the books considered classics then, the "horrid novels" and romances, and the grasping publishers. She looks at the architecture and decor of Austen's era that made up "the profusion and elegance of modern taste": Regency houses for instance, Chippendale furniture, "picturesque scenery." On the smaller scale she answers questions that may baffle modern readers of Austen's work. What, for example, was "hartshorn"? How did Lizzy Bennet "let down" her gown to hide her muddy petticoat? Ross shows us the fashions, and the subtle ways Jane Austen used clothes to express character. Courtship, marriage, adultery, class and "rank," mundane tasks of ordinary life, all appear, as does the wider political and military world--especially the navy, in which her brothers served.
This book will add depth to all readers' enjoyment of Jane Austen, whether confirmed addicts or newcomers wanting to know what all the fuss is about.
Customer Reviews:
A Helpful "life-and-times" of Jane Austen.......2007-02-03
This review was originally written for the hardcover edition, but on the assumption that this is fairly similar, I'll repeat it here.
This book is a Companion in the sense that it attempts to give the reader context for reading Austen's work, not in the sense of a reference work listing all her characters, etc. It is perfect for anyone beginning to read Austen's works, especially if they have little knowledge of the era. It would also be helpful as a basic guide to the late Georgian period, which is the setting of so many historical and romance novels.
Ross starts off with a brief (44 page) biography, followed by 8 chapters on the era: "The Common Daily Routine", "Of Lovers and Husbands", "Politics and Public Events", etc. In each, Ross discusses the era in general terms, and also relates the topic to Austen's life and writings. I read the book straight through, but it appears that each chapter could stand on its own: information is sometimes repeated if it relates to more than one topic. Lydia Bennett's finding ornaments in a book store is mentioned in both "The Present Fashions" and "The Subject of Books."
There are numerous plates of well-chosen pictures relating to both Jane Austen's personal life and the era in general.
There are no notes, but there is a helpful, but admittedly not exhaustive bibliography and an unusually detailed index. This index isn't perfect, it only lists one of the references to Lydia mentioned above, but it is much more thorough and in depth than most indexes, and helpfully has little notes after some of the entries that may be enough in themselves to refresh the reader's memory.
Amazon.com
The author of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, and other comedies of manners gets a biography similar in tone to her own books: intelligent but not intellectual, witty without being nasty. Claire Tomalin, author of four previous biographies of notable British women, treats Jane Austen (1775-1817) with the respect her genius deserves. Tomalin eschews gossip and speculation in favor of a sober account of the writer's life that nonetheless sparkles with sly humor. Perceptive analyses of each of Austen's novels, with autobiographical links suggested but never insisted upon, add to the value of Jane Austen: A Life.
Book Description
Here, firmly rooted in her own social setting for the first time, is the real Jane Austen--the shy woman willing to challenge convention, the woman of no pretensions who nevertheless called herself "formidable," a woman who could be frivolous and yet suffer from black depressions, who showed unfailing loyalty and, in the conduct of her own life, unfailing bravery. In an act of understanding and brilliant synthesis, Claire Tomalin reveals Jane Austen with a clarity never before achieved, one which makes us look upon her novels with fresh and even greater admiration.
The world she wrote about--that place of civility and reassuring stability--was never quite her own. As Tomalin shows, Jane Austen's family existed on the very fringe of the world she described in her fiction, struggling to get ahead with little money and no land in the competitive society of Georgian England, sometimes succeeding but often failing with painful consequences. New research in family papers has yielded a rich, tragicomic picture of the Austen clan--their ambitions, their matrimonial alliances, their exotic connections with India and France. At the same time, Tomalin's explorations in local archives reveal a surprising view of the neighbors the family lived among in Hampshire, more extravagant and eccentric by far than anyone depicted in Austen's books. We realize how much closer her genius lies, in its splendid artifice, to the great comic operas of Mozart than to the main tradition of the English novel.
But it is in the deeply human portrait of Jane Austen herself that this biography excels. The honesty and directness of her personality (perfect heroines made her "sick and wicked"), her strength in giving up a chance at marriage to follow the path her vocation as a writer required her to take, the warmth and long consistency of her relationship with her sister, Cassandra, the poignancy of her death--Claire Tomalin here captures, with unforgettable skill, the living character of a great writer who is read, reread, read again, and adored, now more than ever.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
hard to find biography.......2007-01-09
I could not find a good biography of Jane Austin at any of our local bookstores....this item was exactly what I was looking for. It arrived quickly and in excellent condition.
Interesting peripheral material, mediocre to poor biography.......2005-06-29
I find it impossible to trust any would-be interpreter of Jane Austen who, in her analysis of Pride & Prejudice, writes the line: "Her [Mrs. Bennet's] restored faith that Lydia and Wickham will turn out very well is wonderfully brought to pass". This is easily my least favorite among the seven or so biographies that I have read; I was particularly disappointed after marvelous beginning that Tomalin made in describing Jane's birth and earliest life. I made myself read it a second time in order to be fair.
I am left with the feeling that while Tomalin genuinely admires Jane Austen, she has considerably more pity for her life than sympathy for her point of view. Ms. Tomalin places a great emphasis on the importance of passion and enthusiasm that I doubt Austen so uncritically shared. Indeed, Ms. Tomalin has to interchange JA's heroes and villains in order to come up with interpretations of the book that please her, and in several cases, insist that JA got things wrong in her epilogues. This leads to some odd juxtapositions that fit right in with Tomalin's somewhat overwrought thinking. Tomalin cannot accept that Marianne could move on and love Colonel Brandon, but she is also upset that Cassandra Austen spent the rest of her life mourning her dead fiance. Isn't perpetual mourning for a lost love what Tomalin would have Marianne doing, given that Willoughby married someone else? Consistently inconsistent, Tomalin lambastes Fanny Price for declining to marry someone that she doesn't love (or like or trust), at least while there her true love remains available. Claudia Johnson, in her book Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, has some acerbic and apropos remarks about the tradition of women remaining true to their first love, generally by dying, as Marianne almost did.
Tomalin is apparently one of those who feel that it is not enough of an achievement for Austen to be one of the very few authors who, after two hundred years, remain both critical and popular successes. No, she wants to convert JA to a heroine suitable for the late 20th century. This is particularly ironic since she faults the Victorians for their attempts to remake JA in their own image. She attempts, failing dismally in my case, to convince us that JA had an eventful life. She turns to posthumous psychoanalysis for this, interpreting eventful as traumatic and finding psychic wounds from the Austens' childrearing techniques. The book rapidly takes on a whiny quality that I found tedious and annoying.
I comment on this being 52, having been born in 1953. As such, I can remember when "experts had proven" that the child is born a blank slate through the present day when parents are held to have little effect on their children's psychological development except for the responsibility to keep them alive and healthy. I am also well aware that "expert" child-rearing advice has changed over the centuries, some eras recommend techniques that in other eras were considered certain to produce psychopaths. (readers might want to read Sarah Hrdy's Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species or Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature). While my own tastes in childrearing certainly would align more with Tomalin's, I find it foolish and irritating for her to excoriate Mrs. Austen for raising their children according to the accepted pattern of their day. (And for all that Tomalin may bring in feminist interpretation, she is clearly engaging in mother-blaming here: all decisions that she doesn't like are charged to Mrs. Austen.) While her arguments of how this affected JA may seem logical, does it make sense when considering that so many other people of the time shared similar experiences? The reader may want to read Elizabeth Jenkin's arguments in her 1938 book, Jane Austen: A Biography, that Jane Austen was in fact writing through most of her "years of silence", as well as David Nokes arguments in his 1997 biography, Jane Austen: A Life, that Jane was having too good a time to write as much, before accepting Tomalin's explanation of Jane as falling into a severe depression after a repetition of childhood trauma.
I think in her efforts to make JA into a martyr, Tomalin slights her as a social critic. She also fails to fully appreciate the problems of dependent daughters in interlocked families, the tension between wanting and needing family unity, and the desire for personal autonomy. I have no doubt that JA keenly felt and resented the disadvantages imposed upon her as a younger unmarried daughter, but this is not a unique problem imposed by her particular family. The conventions of the time meant that Jane and Cassandra really were financial drains on their family: their society had failed to make any accomodation to the realities of making women financially dependent but expecting companiate marriages. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the popularity of JA derives from her attention to this double-bind that so many of her female readers shared.
Tomalin sees the effect only on Jane, not on her other family members. I can sympathize with JA's distress at leaving Steventon, but surely her 72-year old father was entitled to retire? Her parents spent decades in Hampshire whether they liked it or not because that is where Rev. George Austen's living was - didn't they have as much right to live somewhere else for a change as Jane had stay where she was? Tomalin faults James for not offering his sisters a home independent of his mother; I presume that Jane could have asserted her wishes on the basis of his offer to house all three women, but, independent of Jane's dislike for James' wife Mary, how practical would that have been? If Jane has lived with James, would Cassandra have been with her or with their mother? At that time, given their resources, it may have been impossible for Mrs. Austen and her daughters to independently pursue the course that each preferred. Several solutions suggest themselves, but they all involve Mrs. Austen living as a dependent relation or the brothers Austen coming up with a lot more money.
Tomalin also by this makes JA something of a hothouse flower. Tomalin makes a point of mentioning servants, but in a somewhat contradictory fashion is arguing that Jane's family should have understood her genius and supported her in the leisured style to which she was somewhat, and would have like to have been even more accustomed. I would have liked that myself. How many people have the luxury of choosing quiet or excitement and work or leisure just as they choose? If JA had lived today, would she have been able to write if she had also been required to earn her own living?
Tomalin has done some wonderful research on peripheral matters such as Austen's neighbors that anyone who is very interested in Austen or her period should find very interesting. Indeed, has this been written as a book on the associates of the Austens, I would probably have given it 5-stars as long as Tomalin left out her psychologizing. This includes much more about Jane's cousin and sister-in-law Eliza Hancock than is warranted by her importance in the author's life. It is very interesting, and I am happy to read it, but it does remain that the real biographical information on JA herself is somewhat scanty compared to other biographies of this length. I would not recommend this as either a first or only biography. My own recommendations for biographies so far are Carol Shields (short), Jane Austen (Penguin Lives); Valerie Grosvenor Myers' Jane Austen, Obstinate Heart: A Biography (moderate length, seriously flawed by a lack of notes); and John Halperin's The Life of Jane Austen (long). Elizabeth Jenkins' Jane Austen: A Biography is considered a classic biography, but it can be difficult to get and doesn't strike me as worth the trouble given the other material now available.
The notes are beautifully done so that it is easy to match the note with the citation in the text. There are also useful family trees and a map of the Hampshire neighborhood of the Austens. I cannot begin to guess what the logic for arranging the bibliography was.
Magnificent. .......2005-04-18
What a fascinating portrait! I found this very hard to put down. Tomalin is an excellent writer: straightforward, witty, and articulate about my favorite author's life. Loving Austen novels, I also have to add that I have been hesitant to ever read a biography, but now I am grateful that I understand Austen's world and her extremely interesting family. The stories draw you in and keep you reading long into the night, transporting you to England in the 1770's and beyond. Reading this is a little like reading Austen and that is the highest compliment I can pay an author.
Jane Explained.......2004-11-28
I have often wondered what Jane's life was *really* like. Having read every one of her books and seen most of the movies, I often wondered if she was like any of her heroines. In reading this book, I began to understand her situation more. A woman who was reliant on her brothers for a place to live, and money to spend, but who exercised a spirit of independence in her written word.
Honestly, while I can see why Cass mutilated Jane's letters after her death, I think that it is truly a shame because we will never know what she was thinking during that period of her life where she wasn't writing at all, or at any of the other difficult times of her life.
Tomalin's book was well researched and brought me into Jane's life as no other book has done. I thought it was interesting to watch Jane's growth as a writer. I was left with the thought that Jane imbued her heroines with a part of herself. Whether it is Lizzie's intelligence, or Anne Elliot's situation in life, Jane's life was full of interesting events and people. Tomalin's book allowed Jane to shine. A must read.
Could this be the last word on Jane Austen?.......2003-12-29
Jane Austen's stocks rise higher and higher as the years go by. Several of her novels continue to feature in bestseller lists, film and TV adaptations of them abound, and biographies appear regularly. This masterly biography, by Claire Tomalin, is the seventh Jane Austen biography I have read in the past twenty years.
Claire Tomalin examines her elusive subject from very possible perspective. The Austen genealogy is probed, every known neighbor and witness and every witness's evidence is weighed and balanced, Jane Austen's writings are examined and assessed, and the situations of her brothers' living descendants are sometimes mentioned. Publishing and republishing histories are given, a family tree is included, and the many illustrations are given punchy captions. Gracing (or disfiguring) the cover is the only known pictorial representation of Jane Austen, an unfinished sketch done by her sister Cassandra, a sketch that was not discovered until long after Jane and Cassandra had died and which a niece said was "hideously unlike" her aunt.
Don't assume from all this that the book is merely an exhaustive effort of plodding detection. Sensitive and intelligent guesswork is here. Brilliant deductions are made. What is known, for example is that the Austen daughters and their parents had no permanent home during the "unproductive" decade when Jane was in her 20s and early 30s. What is also known is that Jane Austen had drafted three of her novels before this, as well as the novella "Lady Susan". The fact that Claire Tomalin deduces from this is that Jane Austen must have protected and cared for her manuscripts like a mother with newborn babies. Carriers would have been unreliable, cases of paper could break and spill, and a penniless young woman could hardly command premium quality cartage.
Other known facts are sometimes given a creative spin. You will read an especially creative and imaginative account of Jane Austen receiving, accepting and then rejecting a proposal of marriage from Harris Biggs.
While all this is very satisfying, the effect of this substantial biography is to leave me still unable to perfectly "place" Jane Austen, an effect that will probably prompt me to read a further seven biographies of her.
Book Description
Jane Austen in Bath: Walking Tours of the Writer’s City is a beautifully illustrated book organized into four walking tours around the city of Bath–where she set both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion–two novels that mirrored her own experience: that of an impressionable, optimistic young girl hoping to meet the man she would marry and later, that of a mature woman disappointed in love. It was in Bath that many of Austen’s own romantic adventures and misadventures occurred, and this book artfully weaves together the story of Austen’s life there with those of her beloved characters.
This guidebook describes the places frequented by Austen and her characters. Readers can stroll along the shady, tree-lined walk where Anne Elliot met Captain Wentworth after he returned from seven years at sea, and visit the galleries that hosted the glittering balls where the impressionable young Catherine Moreland made her debut.
Bath is an exquisite, perfectly preserved Georgian town located in the stunning countryside just an hour and a half from London. It was a spa town in Austen’s day and still is. The streets, crescents, gardens, and buildings look almost exactly the same as they did then. Many of the places that she frequented are still there–visitors can still buy the traditional Sally Lunn rolls at the same bakery/caf? that Austen frequented; enter the famous Pump Rooms and Assembly Rooms where she drank the waters, gossiped, and danced; stroll the unique Georgian crescents and pleasure gardens where she enjoyed fireworks and lavish public breakfasts; and see the homes Austen and her family lived in, some of which are now open to the public.
Jane Austen in Bath is the perfect companion to discovering the vibrant and fashionable social scene of Bath during both Austen’s time and today.
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.
Book Description
Jane Austen was a great novelist and one of the central figures of English literature, but she herself lived a quiet and uneventful life, mostly in the two Hampshire villages of Steventon and Chawton. Jon Spence's new biography focuses its attention away from the wider literary and intellectual currents that informed her writing and instead concentrates on the immediate influences on her life and work. Becoming Jane Austen shows how Jane Austen's own personal experiences resonated throughout her work, from her juvenilia to Sanditon.
Customer Reviews:
Loved It!.......2007-10-05
I was skeptical about this book when I got it. But I ended up loving it. The information is presented in a way that makes it very interesting. You get to know more than just Jane, you get to know her family and friends too. I would recommend it to any Jane fan.
Wonderful!.......2007-10-05
This is a wonderful book. It also arrived quickly and in perfect condition! Good Work.
Becoming Jane Austen.......2007-09-01
Very good book---I have read 6 other bios on Jane Austen this book was one
of the best.
Very engaging pop-history woven with lit crit.......2007-08-03
Spence is a scholar but here he is writing for the public. He appears to draw heavily from published anthologies of Austen's letters, the Austen family will, etc., rather than primary sources themselves. This is information that readers could have sought out on their own or found in another biography. Where Spence shines is in his inter-weaving of family biography with literary critique, and, perhaps more controversially, his attempts to explicitly link events/people in Austen's life to her fictional characters and senarios.
I would consider this a fairly edgy enterprise relative to the work of "traditional" historians. Still, the discipline has, like others, changed over the past several decades, and not only recognizes the impossibility of objectivity, but allows for more explicit individual interpretation. And in fact, most of Spence's extrapolations are not only fascinating but well-supported; for example, his contention that Austen's own family history laid the groundwork for the three Ward sisters' differing marriages (in Mansfield Park) makes perfect sense. A minority of his contentions appears to have involved a bit too much creative interpretation, but one can simply research those on one's own or come to one's own conclusions.
To read this book is to be impressed by the very fragility of life--especially for childbearing women--in early 19th century England. The book is riddled with so many early (under 30) and childbirth deaths, it appears amazing women agreed to marriage in the first place. But that, of course, is Spence's second achievement: impressing upon us the deeply precarious financial position in which women found themselves, unable to earn their own keep and forced to rely on the support of a brother, husband, or the bequest of a dying relation.
My only problem with the book is the slightly prosaic writing style, the repeated use of slangy words (i.e. tetchy) and the puzzling reliance on second-person address (i.e. "You see.." "You read this and feel..."). I have never read a work by a professional historian to refer directly to readers and not to the general populace ("one feels..." "one can see...").
Novel-like in its readability, thoughtful and unafraid of contention, Becoming Jane Austen deserves a place on the shelf of every English lit or history fan, Austenite or no.
Ripped off?.......2007-06-23
I saw this paperback movie tie-in last night and grabbed it.
I love Jane and am looking forward to the film. I've read a
number of bios of Jane over the years and this one looks
interesting.
However, I have to give a thumbs down to the publisher.
Where are the illustrations that are clearly listed in
the text? The author obviously included them in the
original edition, but they are gone from this one.
When I pay $15 for a book, even a paperback, I expect
to get the WHOLE book, illustrations included. The
paperback edition of "Queen Isabella" by Allison Weir,
which was about the same price, included ALL the
illustrations from the original, and in color! So
what's the deal with Continuum? I'd return the book.
except I still want to read it. Maybe I'll get it
out of the library and see what I'm missing!
Book Description
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is one of the most popular novelists in the English language and her work is more popular today than ever before. The wit and romance of her writing captivate television and cinema audiences worldwide, while boosting the readership of the novels themselves. In an age when attention spans are low and fast, furious action drama overwhelms television and movie audiences, the sheer romance of Jane Austen adaptations has continued to prove itself at awards ceremonies. But who was Jane Austen and what sort of world did she inhabit? Maggie Lane, a respected Austen authority and a committee member of the Jane Austen Society, takes a look at the historical and social period in which Jane Austen was writing ? a time when England was developing into a colonial power, while George III sank into madness and the Regency took hold. Elsewhere, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars raged and the New World was developing.
Customer Reviews:
A good resource for Jane Austen/Regency lovers, but ..........2007-03-20
This is an enjoyable flip-through for Jane Austen and Regency lovers, but because the format limits the length of any entry, it is a rather abbreviated overview without a lot of depth. Many of the entries had me yearning for more information, especially those items about social mores, society, relationships within the family, etc.
An Excellent Retelling of Her Life and Times.......2006-08-23
These days many books come along that discuss specific influences on Jane's writing such as poets, other authors, politics and social customs. This book allows a return to the overview of her story. The hard cover book is 8 x 11 in. which makes it easy to be a coffee table presentation or to read in a comfortable upright chair or even in bed (Yes, I do it!) Six well written chapters choronical her life, who she was, what it was like to live in Regency England, the society and spirit of her times, what her country was like, and her influence through the ages especially via her six novels and in the recent movies and television productions. For the old timers who have followed Jane Austen for some time or for the new comers wanting to know more, this is the book for you.
Helped me understand Jane Austen's novels better.......2002-05-24
This is a really great book. I'm a fan of Jane Austen and have read all her novels but there were many things in them that I didn't understand because I didn't know the culture, customs and history of that time. Just one small example--Mr. Darcy hands his letter to Elizabeth Bennett instead of mailing it. Apparently unmarried men and women did not correspond with each other unless they were relatives or engaged to be married. Another example--balls and dances were a primary way for unmarried people to meet and socialize and one of the few ways they could talk alone to each other (while on the dance floor). So the balls/dances in Jane Austen's books are much more significant than I realized.
I would highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand Jane Austen's novels better.
Worth It!.......2001-10-31
This books is so informative! Easy to read, lots of information about the Georgian and Regency Eras, very informative. It goes into depth about Jane Austen's time and her life. It talks about everything from the Army, to everyday life, to the madness of King George, fashion, etc.. So much info! If you're into history or Jane Austen, you'll like this book.
Worth It!.......2001-10-31
This books is so informative! Easy to read, lots of information about the Georgian and Regency Eras, very informative. It goes into depth about Jane Austen's time and her life. It talks about everything from the Army, to everyday life, to the madness of King George, fashion, etc.. So much info! If you're into history or Jane Austen, you'll like this book.
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