Publisher : Tantor Media
Publication Date : 2010 04 19
>> three or four families in a Country Village
I have been no great admirer of Jane Austen having long considered her the mother of the romance and chick lit genres but still an author whose reputation demands that her work be sampled I have in fact read only four of her six novels My opinion of her work falls between that of Mark Twain who said Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin bone and that of the most ardent Janeites who read little other than Jane Austen novels I have however often wondered how Miss Austen became the literary icon she is today In Jane s Fame Claire Harman explains exactly how that happened
As Harman points out despite the great fame she enjoys today very little is known about the real Jane Austen No proper image of her was left behind and with the help of her sister Cassandra the bulk of her private correspondence and papers was destroyed after Jane s death Jane Austen died in 1817 at age 41 living to see the publication of just four of her six novels and only some local success as an author Even this came to her only after almost twenty years of work as an unpublished author and for most of the 1820s the decade immediately following her death none of her books would be in print Jane Austen would in fact be almost forgotten by the reading public for most of the next forty years
All that would finally change when Jane s nephew one James Edward Austen Leigh published his Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870 beginning a steady rise in his aunt s reputation The book written fifty three years after Jane s death is based upon the reluctant memoirist s impressions about his aunt and it offers at best a misleading view of her life and her attitudes toward her writing By World War I a British soldier seeking mental escape from the horrors of war was likely to lose himself inside the pages of a Jane Austen novel buried in the calmer saner England he would find there But the best for Jane Austen s reputation was yet to come
In 1995 the BBC had a huge success with its production of Austen s Pride and Prejudice and a new industry was born a steady flow of adaptations of Jane Austen novels for the cinema and television Pride and Prejudice would be followed by other BBC adaptations and big screen versions of several other Austen works including Emma and the highly regarded Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson Suddenly Jane Austen was mainstream and the rest is history
Jane s Fame is a well written explanation of how such an unlikely rise to fame for Jane Austen could happen despite her near disappearance from the literary landscape in the several decades following her early death She is now a cultural icon one of those people instantly recognized by just her first name even to those who might never read one of her six novels but serious fans of the woman who wrote about three or four families in a Country Village will almost certainly want to add Jane s Fame to their Austen collection
>> We are all Janeites
Claire Harman author of the pseudo biography of Jane Austen writes a very observant book I call this a pseudo biography simply because Jane Austen lived only 41 years and left very little in actual biographical material Some letters to relatives and original copies of her work have had to suffice to the many biographers through the years Harman therefore after recounting the basics of Jane Austen s life and her family life concentrates the rest of her book on how Jane Austen and her writing has been perceived in the almost two hundred years since her death
Janeites appeared within 20 or so years after her death Her work fell out of favor by publishers in the 15 or so years after her death in 1816 but interest was renewed after family members had her work reprinted in the 1830s While she had achieved a limited popularity for her writing during her lifetime her name was never printed on her books rather A Lady denoted the author her fame took off in the 1830 s Her nephew the son of her favorite brother wrote a biography of her in 1869 which helped to spur further interest in the long dead author Her work the six novels she wrote soon gained an appeal to readers in England and then European and American society Her work was popular by soldiers in the trenches in France in WW1
It has remained popular and a group of readers mostly women but a few men called Janeites who have in a sense caused Jane Austen s work to go beyond published works to movies and TV series The first Pride and Prejudice movie filmed during the early years of WW2 had the temerity to actually CHANGE a very significant plot line Lady Catherine deBurgh s interference in Elizabeth and Darcy s relationship I am still in shock forty years after seeing this this desecration in my high school English class Thank god subsequent film versions of the book have remained true to the author s plot lines Not including for instance the adding of a fictional scene of Darcy leaping into a pond be still my heart in the 1995 A E/BBC mini series All of Jane Austen s works have been filmed some like P P many times
Harman does a very good job explaining the Jane explosion on to the world Her book s a very good addition to the library of any Janeite
>> Insightful and entertaining account sure to please Janeites
Jane Austen is my favorite author one I have admired ever since I first read Pride and Prejudice more than two decades ago though my favorite of her novels is Sense and Sensibility I have a tendency to reread her novels on a yearly basis and I have also watched the numerous screen adaptations primarily by BBC the latest being Emma After watching Emma 2009 I craved for some new insights into the author s life and Jane s Fame fits the bill perfectly It is a witty treatise on how the author achieved world renown and of how that fame has endured all these years later
The book challenges the traditional and widely accepted portrayal of JA as a refined and modest English gentlewoman who tried to be discreet in her writing endeavors an image perpetuated by her nephew James Edward Austen Leigh in A Memoir of Jane Austen And Other Family Recollections Oxford World s Classics Reality according to author Claire Harman was quite different I found it interesting that reactions to Jane Austen s works veered from absolute adoration to disgust Mark Twain could not abide her writing style and Charlotte Bronte once made a scathing remark about the author s work There are others who provide insightful observations for example the observation that heroines in JA s novels reveal women s true characteristics even if this is not always flattering which I can t help but agree with In all readers are afforded compelling insights into various opinions on JA and her work almost 150 years of it Harman writes in such an entertaining manner that Jane s Fame makes for a compelling reading experience and I never found my interest waning Other suggested reading
Jane Austen A Life
Jane Austen Her Life The Definitive Portrait of Jane Austen Her Life Her Art Her Family Her World
Jane Austen s World The Life and Times of England s Most Popular Novelist
Jane Austen The World of Her Novels
and a BBC production
Miss Austen Regrets The Life and Loves of Jane Austen
