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The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things (2012)

de Paula Byrne

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4541454,238 (4.14)78
This new biography explores the forces that shaped the interior life of one of the most beloved novelists in the English language. Each chapter begins by evoking an object that conjures up a key moment or theme in Austen's life and work. The woman who emerges is far tougher, more socially and politically aware, and altogether more modern that the conventional picture. The book looks at the biographical influences on her work, as well as her boundless wit and energy--Jacket.… (més)
  1. 00
    Jane and Her Gentlemen: Jane Austen and the Men in Her Life and Novels de Audrey Hawkridge (PuddinTame)
    PuddinTame: Both are "specialized" books, focussing on narrower aspects of Jane Austen's life and work, rather than being regular biographies. For the reader who has read conventional biographies and wants more detail.
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Es mostren 1-5 de 14 (següent | mostra-les totes)
I learned a lot about Jane Austen's family and her times. This does not go in chronological order. It uses "small things" as a jumping off point to expand on her life, family and times. ( )
  nx74defiant | Aug 11, 2022 |
Every scholar brings their own interpretations and insights to their subject. No matter how many books on Jane Austen I read, there is always something new to learn.

Byrne's book is entertaining and I enjoyed reading it. She considers Austen through the lens of physical objects that impacted her life. Yes, the famous amber cross gifted by her brother is one, and her writing desk gifted from her father. Also, the card of lace her aunt was accused of stealing and the bathing machines Austen would have used when staying at her beloved oceanside resorts. Each object is symbolic of an aspect of Austen's life discussed in the chapter.

Of particular interest are insights into Austen's novel Mansfield Park.

Jane had visited the estate of the real Lord Mansfield who adopted a niece to be their heir. She was raised with Dido, the illegitimate daughter of Mansfield's nephew and an enslaved black woman. Byrnes explores Jane's knowledge of slavery through Mansfield, close and distant relatives, and her naval brother Franks' interception of slave vessels and his abolitionist beliefs. The Norris family name also had associations, for it was the name of a notorious slave trader.

Byrnes dissects the background to the novel's plot as reflecting what was going on in Antigua, the reliance on slave labor, the depletion of the soil, and brewing unrest. She notes that Fanny is the only one who wished to ask Mr. Bertram about the slave trade.

After reading Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, I was the only one of my university classmates who liked Mansfield Park. The morally superior, powerless, and sensitive Fanny stood her ground, which impressed me. But I did not consider what Byrnes addresses: that the word 'home' was used 140 times in the novel. She asserts that the importance of home is a main theme. "Is it a place or is it a family?", she queries. One of the transformative events in my life was moving at age ten, leaving me homesick and forever wondering about true homes and the homes we make out of necessity.

We can only know Austen through her surviving letters, her novels, and one authenticated portrait--of her back. I appreciate Byrnes deep exploration of these sources which helps to further fill out our understanding of the 'real' Jane Austen. ( )
  nancyadair | Oct 14, 2020 |
What a well-researched review of what Jane Austen's real life was like! The author has studied small mementos Jane left behind, which have been missed by other biographers and then researches and explains just how large Jane's window on life was. Paula Byrne even suggests—very cleverly-- that one of these mementos might actually be an informal portrait of Jane's face! ( )
  Diane-bpcb | Jun 13, 2016 |
Paula Byrne takes several items belonging to Jane Austen or of her era and talks about how they were an influence or a inspiration on her. How they reflect her life and the kind of person she was, there's colour illustrations of the sketches that are the theme of the book and now, dammit, I have to find my writing slope, get it recovered and use the damned thing. ( )
  wyvernfriend | Apr 20, 2016 |
If you want a chronological, biographical sketch of Jane Austen's life, this book isn't it. However, if you want to get a feel for the kind of person Jane Austen was, then this book should satisfy you. I still would have liked more details on Austen's life rather than the lengthy extrapolations on her relatives, but I suppose it's difficult to flesh out Austen's life when our records of her are incomplete.

It's fascinating seeing how often Austen drew from the people and events in her own life to color her books, and I loved the way Byrne was able to shine light on this literary hero's personality. I'm going to have to add Jane Austen to my list of people, dead or alive, I would love to have a conversation with. I expect she'd be a wise, witty, and fun conversationalist, the kind of person I wouldn't have trouble staying friends with.

Jane Austen is a writer I appreciate more and more as I get older. It's such a shame that she died so young—just think of all the treasures the world didn't get to enjoy because her life was cut short. ( )
  AngelClaw | Apr 9, 2016 |
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The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain, had suffered all the ill-usage of children -- and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done for the drawing room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy, and a moonlight lake in Cumberland; a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the main-mast.

Mansfield Park, vol 1, ch. 16
[S]he seized the scrap of paper ... locked it up with the chain, as the dearest part of the gift. It was the only thing approaching to a letter which she had ever received from him; she might never receive another; it was impossible that she ever should receive another so perfectly gratifying in the occasion and the style. Two lines more prized had never fallen from the pen of the most distinguished author -- nver more completely blessed the researches of the fondest biographer. The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's.

Mansfield Park, vol 2, ch. 9
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Each chapter begins with a description of the image that sets its theme, illustrated in plate section throughout the book. (Author's Note)
This is a watercolour of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England. (Prologue, Captain Harville's Carpentry)
All faces are turned towards the young boy. (1, The Family Profile)
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This new biography explores the forces that shaped the interior life of one of the most beloved novelists in the English language. Each chapter begins by evoking an object that conjures up a key moment or theme in Austen's life and work. The woman who emerges is far tougher, more socially and politically aware, and altogether more modern that the conventional picture. The book looks at the biographical influences on her work, as well as her boundless wit and energy--Jacket.

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