Jane Austen: A Life - Claire Tomalin
Jane Austen: A Life - Claire Tomalin
Non-Fiction
Pages: 400
Jane Austen's books are so ubiquitous these days, so immensely popular, and have so seeped into popular culture that most people feel they have some mental image of her. And yet too often people's imagined pictures of Jane Austen confuse her with her characters - one only has to think for an example of the overly romantic film Becoming Jane, which envisaged Jane's youthful dalliance with Tom Lefroy as a passionate love affair worthy of her own books. And this confusion over Jane's character and person is not a new phenomenon: even Sir Walter Scott wrote of her as a 'young lady' in an article, when by that point she was dead and had been in her forties when he first read and reviewed her work.
Part of this confusion is the result of the shadowy nature of Jane's life. Much of her correspondence was destroyed by family members after her death, and as a young unmarried sister, daughter and aunt in a large family she left little documentary trail. As Tomalin comments in her postscript to this book, there is ironically far more evidential material on Jane's brothers and their families, despite the fact that the only interest in them and their lives is because of her. This biography of Jane Austen is as much about her family as it is about her, and one cannot help but feel Jane would have approved of that. Her life revolved around her family and her writing, so it seems fitting that both are given equal weighting in these pages.
Tomalin is an excellent biographer, and I have thoroughly enjoyed her other books, as I enjoyed this one. With this and her biography of Nelly Ternan, she clearly has a knack for teasing out the details of a life from the neglectful murk of history. Jane Austen led a fairly settled life, but that is not to say it was a life without its upsets, upheavals, heartbreaks and turbulence, minor though they may have been compared to other novelists. But these pages in Jane's company never once falter or flag, and I could hardly put this book down. And this despite the fact that I have never been especially enamoured of Jane Austen's works. I always felt her wit overrated, but now, having a greater appreciation of how remarkable such words and such a talent were coming from an unregarded rural clergyman's daughter, I may have to give them another chance.
Non-Fiction
Pages: 400
Jane Austen's books are so ubiquitous these days, so immensely popular, and have so seeped into popular culture that most people feel they have some mental image of her. And yet too often people's imagined pictures of Jane Austen confuse her with her characters - one only has to think for an example of the overly romantic film Becoming Jane, which envisaged Jane's youthful dalliance with Tom Lefroy as a passionate love affair worthy of her own books. And this confusion over Jane's character and person is not a new phenomenon: even Sir Walter Scott wrote of her as a 'young lady' in an article, when by that point she was dead and had been in her forties when he first read and reviewed her work.
Part of this confusion is the result of the shadowy nature of Jane's life. Much of her correspondence was destroyed by family members after her death, and as a young unmarried sister, daughter and aunt in a large family she left little documentary trail. As Tomalin comments in her postscript to this book, there is ironically far more evidential material on Jane's brothers and their families, despite the fact that the only interest in them and their lives is because of her. This biography of Jane Austen is as much about her family as it is about her, and one cannot help but feel Jane would have approved of that. Her life revolved around her family and her writing, so it seems fitting that both are given equal weighting in these pages.
Tomalin is an excellent biographer, and I have thoroughly enjoyed her other books, as I enjoyed this one. With this and her biography of Nelly Ternan, she clearly has a knack for teasing out the details of a life from the neglectful murk of history. Jane Austen led a fairly settled life, but that is not to say it was a life without its upsets, upheavals, heartbreaks and turbulence, minor though they may have been compared to other novelists. But these pages in Jane's company never once falter or flag, and I could hardly put this book down. And this despite the fact that I have never been especially enamoured of Jane Austen's works. I always felt her wit overrated, but now, having a greater appreciation of how remarkable such words and such a talent were coming from an unregarded rural clergyman's daughter, I may have to give them another chance.