Devoney Looser
Autor/a de The Making of Jane Austen
Sobre l'autor
Devoney Looser is a Foundation Professor of English at Arizona State University, a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar, and a Guggenheim Fellow. She is the author of Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850 and British Women Writers and the Writing of History, mostra'n més 1670-1820. mostra'n menys
Obres de Devoney Looser
Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës (2022) 54 exemplars
The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing in the Romantic Period (Cambridge Companions to Literature) (2015) 12 exemplars
Travel and Leisure in the Georgian Era 1 exemplars
Clerks, Clergy, and Other Men's Professions 1 exemplars
The Accomplished Woman 1 exemplars
Luxury, Fashion, and Labor in the Regency 1 exemplars
Sanditon and Austen's Unfinished Fiction 1 exemplars
Health and Wellness in Austen's England 1 exemplars
After 1817 - Austen's Growing Posthumous Fame 1 exemplars
Lady Susan : Austen's Merry Widow 1 exemplars
Class and Courtesy in Regency Society 1 exemplars
Austen's Relations : From Family to Fandom 1 exemplars
British Life in Revolutionary Times 1 exemplars
Persuasion : A Second Bloom 1 exemplars
Money, Inheritance, and All They Entail 1 exemplars
Marriage and Family in Austen's Era 1 exemplars
Regency Romance and Courtship 1 exemplars
Northanger Abbey : Defending the Novel 1 exemplars
Emma : The Proper Use of Power 1 exemplars
Mansfield Park : Silence, Place, and Price 1 exemplars
Pride and Prejudice : Universal Truth 1 exemplars
Sense and Sensibility : Sisters United 1 exemplars
Juvenilia : Austen's Early Raucous Works 1 exemplars
Life and Letters : The Genuine Austen 1 exemplars
Entering Jane Austen's World 1 exemplars
Pop and Popularity : Austen's Enduring Fame 1 exemplars
Obres associades
Rational Creatures: Stirrings of Feminism in the Hearts of Jane Austen's Fine Ladies (2018) — Pròleg — 7 exemplars
Etiquetat
Coneixement comú
- Data de naixement
- 1967-04-11
- Gènere
- female
- Nacionalitat
- USA
- Lloc de naixement
- St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
- Llocs de residència
- Phoenix, Arizona, USA
White Bear Lake, Minnesota, USA - Educació
- Augsburg College (BA|1989)
Stony Brook University - Professions
- Professor of English
literary scholar
biographer - Organitzacions
- Arizona State University
- Premis i honors
- Guggenheim Fellowship
National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar - Biografia breu
- Devoney Looser was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and raised in White Bear Lake. She graduated from Hill-Murray School in Maplewood and then earned a bachelor of arts degree in English from Augsburg College in 1989. She obtained her doctorate in English with a certification in women's studies from Stony Brook University in New York. After teaching at several other institutions, she joined the faculty of Arizona State University, where she is now Foundation Professor of English. In 2020, she was named a Regents Professor. She has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow. Prof. Looser's essays and op-ed pieces have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Salon, and Slate, among others. Her numerous books include The Making of Jane Austen (2017); Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850 (2001); The Life and Works of Jane Austen (ed. 2021); and Sister Novelists: Jane and Anna Maria Porter in the Age of Austen (2022).
Membres
Ressenyes
Potser també t'agrada
Autors associats
Estadístiques
- Obres
- 32
- També de
- 2
- Membres
- 241
- Popularitat
- #94,248
- Valoració
- 4.1
- Ressenyes
- 8
- ISBN
- 26
To place Jane and Anna Maria Porter in a context that many of us are comfortable with:
*They were contemporaries of Jane Austen (indeed, they had mutual acquaintances, and at one point Jane Porter even corresponded with Jane Austen's brother Charles).
*They saw baby Queen Victoria playing on the lawn next to their house and thought things like, "Hey, what a cute kid." (I paraphrase.)
*One of them (Jane Porter) was dazzled at a party one day by the most beautiful male speaking voice she had ever heard, and turned around and realized, whoops, um, that was Lord Byron, and you didn't even get anyone to introduce you, Jane, what were you thinking (which is what Anna Maria said later).
Okay, so that's when they lived. Now, what did they do? They wrote novels. But they developed a new genre--the historical novel. They combined real events with fictionalized characters and dramas, and they were wildly popular. They did this before Walter Scott did, except then he took all the credit.
This biography aims to redress some of that unfair treatment by opening up an honest, detailed, touching view of their lives and accomplishments.
In a way, what's most fascinating to me is that the sources are even available for this kind of work. Fans of Jane Austen well know how frustratingly meager her extant letters are, and what huge gaps there are in really being able to get to the heart of her personality. That's not the case with Jane and Anna Maria Porter. Private details are all there for the taking from their copious correspondence and diaries. And Devoney Looser has painstakingly compiled much of it into a coherent, compassionate account that gives them the dignity they deserve.
Obviously, I find their hot takes on the celebrities of their day to be crazy interesting. I love feeling like I'm getting a fresh eyewitness account of someone or something that feels consigned to the mists of legend. I think of it as a 360-degree view of history... Like you've been looking one direction for a long time, and then someone starts to spin you around, and your mind is blown by what else is in the same space. And I love that. But it's the account of their private lives that's most moving.
Whenever I read something that draws so heavily on private letters, even of people long-dead, I always wrestle with myself over the ethics of it. Because it's incredibly easy to think of them as fictional characters in a book. But then sometimes I stop and remember they were as real as I am. And then I think, "Whoa, this is deeply uncomfortable stuff for me to know about another human being without their permission." Like when I learn that Anna Maria secretly corresponded with and practically became engaged to a man she had seen at a distance but never been introduced to. Or when I learn how Jane Porter was painfully, intensely attracted to a war hero acquaintance and how her family worked and worked and worked to get the two of them in the same room some day.
The Porter sisters produced a huge body of work, much of it to great acclaim, but they often did it while on the brink of deep poverty, struggling with illness and caregiving. This biography respects their account of their own lives. It's so personal. And, yes, it's fascinating. But it also makes you want to protect them, even now, from injury.
Am I interested in reading any of their works now? Not necessarily, although I picked out one or two I might try. But I'm not sure that the point of this book is to get people reading their stuff in this day and age -- it's more to pay homage to "invisible" or forgotten women, which exist in all eras and all fields of interest.
If you're interested in the Regency era and want to go beyond the simplified view often presented in movies and novels today, I recommend this book. Also, of course, if you're interested in women writers, Austen contemporaries, etc.… (més)