The novels of Jane Austen depict a world of civility, reassuring stability and continuity, which generations of readers have supposed was the world she herself inhabited. Claire Tomalin's biography paints a surprisingly different picture of the Austen family and their Hampshire neighbours, and of Jane's progress through a difficult childhood, an unhappy love affair, her experiences as a poor relation and her decision to reject a marriage that would solve all her problems - except that of continuing as a writer. Both the woman and the novels are radically reassessed in this biography.
Drawing on unpublished sources, the author offers an intimate, psychological portrait of the novelist, revealing the truth behind many disturbing Austen family secrets.
With scant information available on their hero, Jane Austen's devoted fans have a bottomless hunger for details about the woman behind the work. This biography feeds that appetite with background on her relationships with family and friends and the contemporary attitudes that shaped Austen's writing. Fifteen removable pieces of memorabilia include facsimiles of personal letters and handwritten drafts of her early works.
Publisher: Baltimore, Md. : Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: UOM:39015007020830
Category: Authors, English
Page: 432
View: 239
Featuring a new preface by the author, this paperback edition of John Halperin's acclaimed and controversial biography moves beyond the usually vague account of Austen's life and away from the serene and untroubled image of Austen created by a protective
Prolific in her time, Jane Austen's biting satire of society and the middle class is still relevant. This complete collection includes Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and more.
With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Carol Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years. In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventown to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from an award–winning novelist, Carol Shields’s magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.
In The Real Jane Austen, acclaimed literary biographer Paula Byrne provides the most intimate and revealing portrait yet of a beloved but complex novelist. Just as letters and tokens in Jane Austen’s novels often signal key turning points in the narrative, Byrne explores the small things – a scrap of paper, a gold chain, an ivory miniature – that held significance in Austen’s personal and creative life. Byrne transports us to different worlds, from the East Indies to revolutionary Paris, and to different events, from a high society scandal to a case of petty shoplifting. In this ground-breaking biography, Austen is set on a wider stage than ever before, revealing a well-traveled and politically aware writer – important aspects of her artistic development that have long been overlooked. The Real Jane Austen is a fresh, compelling, and surprising biography of the author of some of our most enduring classic books – from Pride and Prejudice to Sense and Sensibility, Emma to Persuasion – and a vivid evocation of the world that shaped her.
Previous biographies have set Jane Austen within her social context. This biography places her firmly within her professional context as one of an increasing number of women who published novels between 1790 and 1820. Being a professional writer was, apart from her family, more important to Austen than anything else in her life.
A fascinating look into the myths that continue to shape our understanding and appreciation of Jane Austen. Was Jane Austen the best-selling novelist of her time? Are all her novels romances? Did they depict the traditional world of the aristocracy? Is Austen’s writing easy to understand? Well into the 21st century, Jane Austen continues to be one of the most compelling novelists in all English literature. Many of her ideas about class, family, history, intimacy, manners, love, desire, and society, have inspired “myths” that are often contradictory — she was a Tory who was also a liberal feminist, or, her novels are at once sharply satirical and unapologetically romantic. Myths, like Austen’s works, are dynamic, changing over time and impacting how we read and interpret literature. 30 Great Myths about Jane Austen examines the accepted beliefs — both true and untrue —that have most influenced our readings of Austen. Rather than simply de-bunking, or validating, commonly-held views about Austen, authors Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite explore how these myths can be used to engage with the life, work, and reception of Jane Austen. Applying the most up-to-date scholarship to better understand how myths shape our appreciation of Jane Austen, this fascinating volume: Introduces readers to the history of Austen reception, both in academic scholarship and in the general public Examines Jane Austen’s life and letters, her historical contexts, her texts, and their afterlives Discusses Austen’s influence on the development of literary criticism as a discipline Explores each of Austen’s main novels, as well as relatively obscure texts such as Sanditon and The Watsons Offering engaging narrative and original insights, 30 Great Myths about Jane Austen is a must-read for scholars, instructors, and students of English and Romantic literature, as well as general readers with interest in the life and works of Jane Austen.
A fresh approach to building the life of Jane Austen through her letters, demonstrating that a well-known life can be reframed by being grounded in evidence of that life The Life of the Author: Jane Austen takes readers on a literary-biographical journey through Austen's life in letters. Using a unique non-linear approach, author Catherine Delafield explores three frames for Austen's literary life—family, correspondents, and fiction—to suggest new pathways for the interpretation of life writing about one of the most popular and influential English novelists of all time. Delafield addresses multiple aspects of Austen's epistolary practice and the ways in which her letters, juvenile writings, and unpublished novels have been overlaid on both biography and fiction. Throughout the text, special attention is paid to the changing view of women’s correspondence as personal record and to Cassandra Austen's role as editor of her sister’s surviving letters. The book opens with selected readings from Austen's letters and a review of the family treatment of the life. Subsequent chapters discuss the female circle of correspondents in both extant and missing letters, the letter content and structure of Austen's novels, the use of letters as representations of places and spaces based on Austen's own lived experience of epistolary communication, and more. Discusses how the letters, correspondents, and novels supplement Jane Austen’s fiction and substantiate her life Highlights Austen's use of the letter as a conversation on paper, rather than as an autobiographical tool Explores the letters within Austen's fictional writing as well as recipes, accounts, and needlework with links to the letters Features a select chronology using letters as landmarks, tables representing surviving letters by correspondent, and family trees tracing names and relationships The Life of the Author: Jane Austen is an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate courses on the novel, women's writing, British writing, and life writing, as well as for general readers with interest in gaining new perspectives on Austen's chronological life and literary output.
Previous biographies have set Jane Austen within her social context. This biography places her firmly within her professional context as one of an increasing number of women who published novels between 1790 and 1820. Being a professional writer was, apart from her family, more important to Austen than anything else in her life.
