Jane Austen was not remote from the events of her day, with brothers in the navy, and England at war with France. Reading her biography of Austen has enhanced my reading of her fiction, setting them in the context of her world. I’ve also enjoyed and been impressed by Claire Tomalin’s biographies. In answer to Eva’s questions I have loved Jane Austen’s books for years – since reading Pride and Prejudice as a young teenager. He explained that her life “was not by any means a life of event.” But as Tomalin discovered her life was “full of events, of distress and even trauma, which left marks upon her as permanent as any blacking factory.”Īs I’d previously read Carol Shields’s biography of Austen there was really very little I learned reading this book that surprised me – I already knew the outline of her life, that she was considered rather unrefined by her relatives and of her love for Tom Lefroy who eventually married an heiress. Most of her letters to her sister Cassandra were destroyed by Cassandra and a niece destroyed those she had written to one of her brothers. However, 160 letters remain and there is a biographical note of just a few pages written by her brother, Henry after her death. It did surprise me a little that Claire Tomalin admits that it was not an easy story to investigate, but explained that Jane Austen wrote no autobiographical notes and if she kept any diaries they did not survive her. My outstanding impression of the book is how amazingly detailed it is given the fact that few records of her life have survived.
I listed this book as one I hadn’t reviewed in a Weekly Geeks post – the idea being to spur me on to writing the outstanding reviews and invite questions about the books from other book bloggers.ĭorothy, who sent me the book and who writes Of Books and Bicycles asked Were there things you learned in the book that surprised you? And Eva who writes A Striped Armchair’s questions are – Are you a big Austen fan? Did reading her biography enhance her fiction for you, or take something away? Is Tomalin a relatively objective biographer? It’s been a few weeks since I finished reading Jane Austen: a Life by Claire Tomalin.
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