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Title: Jane Austen : A Life by Claire Tomalin ISBN: 0-679-76676-6 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 27 April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.18 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Jane Austen Revisited
Comment: As someone who studied Jane Austen at university and read many of the "not-a-life-of-incident" accounts of her time, Claire Tomalin's biography proved even more compelling than I had expected. For the casual (ie non-academic) reader, this work presents the ideal combination of exhaustive research and a writer who clearly delights in her subject. Although I find myself miles away from my Jane Austen collection, Tomalin has left me longing to read again all Austen's works - including all the juvenalia and 'unfinisheds' that I somehow never quite found time for. Undoubtedly Austen fans will have rushed or will be rushing to read this book. However, I would urge anyone who has never seen the appeal in her works to give this a try, (just avoid Tomalin's excellent synopses of the novels). A call goes out, especially, to all those men out there - I know they exist, I'm married to one - who think Austen is "just for women". Read it and discover one of the greatest writers of all time.
Rating: 5
Summary: I read it again!
Comment: I was 'reader' from Sydney below. I did lend it to my friends (and sat on the edge of my seat hoping they wouldn't be the kind who don't return your precious books!)
Anyway, I did read it again, and I love it just as much. I re-read Austen at various times, whenever I feel like 'hearing' that crisp, ironic dialogue and beautiful observations that somehow still seem fresh today.
Tomalin has achieved something magical in this volume. She has managed to make it feel as if I really know something about Jane, her society and surroundings.
When first introduced to Jane Austen in high school, she seemed remote, a woman of another time and place. What could she possibly have to say to a young woman from a distant land? Well, perhaps not much at 15....a bit more life experience would be a good thing. But maybe a good place to start would be this biography.
I was fed on the stereotype that Jane Austen was a sickly, sheltered girl and woman, one who had little experience of life outside the drawing room, a sort of consumptive, repressed being. Tomalin shows how far from the truth that portrait is. Jane knew about the ins and outs of the country ball from active participation. She could draw affectionatley hunmorous word pictures of some of her characters through experiencing them. She was quite well-travelled for a woman of her generation, own country, sure, but then only the most extraordinary women were off on the 'Grand Tour'. All these things are obvious in her books if you think about it - Miss Musgrove and friends - male and female- off on their jaunt to Lyme Regis, for example. Jane could write about love and engagement through experience. She did love, and was loved in return, but chose not to marry. Children (nieces and nephews) were a joy to her and she was actively involved in the upbringing of some of them. But never, ever, do we meet an anachronistic Jane. Tomalin does NOT try to shoe-horn her in to some modern day feminist iconography. What we are left with is a portrait of a thoroughly modern woman of HER times. A woman who lived a full life , on her own terms, but within the boundaries of the society of which she was part. That she managed to offer us, the modern reader, such a beautifully resonant portrait of her class and times, that stays fresh today, is a tribute to Austen. That Tomalin has brought that so vividly alive in introducing us to Jane Austen the woman is a tribute to Tomalin.
Rating: 5
Summary: Could this be the last word on Jane Austen?
Comment: 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.
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Title: Samuel Pepys : The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin ISBN: 0375725539 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 11 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Jane Austen's Letters by Jane Austen, Deirdre Le Faye ISBN: 0192832972 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $21.50 |
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Title: Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels by Deirdre Le Faye ISBN: 0810932857 Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen by Edward Copeland, Juliet McMaster ISBN: 0521498678 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Making of Pride and Prejudice by Sue Birtwistle, Susie Conklin ISBN: 014025157X Publisher: Penguin Uk Pub. Date: 26 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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