Another excellent biogrpahy by Calire Tomalin - think I have read most now ( )

If you read only one biography of Jane Austen, read this one. It's not only extraordinarily well-researched, it's as readable as Austen herself. Witty, detailing the Austen family's daily life, not shirking at scandal (cousin Elizabeth may have really been the daughter of Warren Hastings) and never presenting speculation as fact (though not failing to provide factual support for what speculation there is), Tomalin gives great insight into Jane Austen. She does not make the mistake of assuming that Austen's books are biographical, but does show how Austen (not unlike most authors) has taken the threads of her life, her friends and family, and woven from the briliant tapestry of her novels.

Tomalin provides a good deal of information not only about the Austens, but about the world in which they lived, what was happening in it of political importance, what life was like for the different classes, how people lived. Interspersed with the biographical material are thoughtful analyses of Austen's works, and Tomalin shows with great clarity how Austen's fictional world meshes with the one in which she led her life. This really should be required reading for anyone who complains that Austen doesn't share the modern view of what a woman should think and feel and do.

This is a truly impressive undertaking, and one which has well succeeded. Tomalin makes us feel that we know Jane Austen, the girl and the woman, as well as her relations and relationships, and, in so doing, allows us to take our well-read copies of the novels down from our bookshelves and re-read them with greater insight and appreciation.

My outstanding impression of the book is how amazingly detailed it is given the fact that few records of her life have survived.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. 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. 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.”

As I’d previously read Carol Shields’s biography of Austen 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.

Reading this book has enhanced my reading of her fiction, setting them in the context of her world. Jane Austen was not remote from the events of her day, with brothers in the navy, and England at war with France. Tomalin is a relatively objective biographer although every now and then she voices opinions based on her impressions, such as this one concerning Jane’s lack of vanity and efforts to be concerned with fashion and dress design:

In her letters she may comment on the fact that ladies are wearing fruit on their hats, and that it seems more natural to have flowers growing out of the head, and be precise about the colour she requires for dress material; but the impression we get is that, had she lived two hundred years later, she would have rejoiced in the freedom of an old pair of trousers, with a tweed skirt for church, and one decent dress kept for evening. (pages 112 - 113)

But mainly she sticks to the facts, gleaned from the documentary material and concludes that Jane Austen

… is as elusive as a cloud in the night sky.

She has a way of sending biographers away feeling that as Lord David Cecil put it, she remains “as no doubt she would have wished - not an intimate but an acquaintance. “ Her sharpness and refusal to suffer fools, makes you fearful of intruding, misinterpreting, crassly misreading the evidence. (page 285)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and particularly liked the quotations from Austen’s letters and the details about her family and friends. ( )

Tomalin has produced a very readable biography of Jane Austen. While the source material Tomalin has to work with is limited—her sister Cassandra unfortunately destroyed many of Jane's letters after her death—she is a sensitive interpreter of what does survive. She is good at correcting the traditional image of Austen as a somewhat prim, retiring, romantic old maid, replacing that with the kind of woman we see reflected in her surviving letters: independent, self-assured, extroverted, and flawed. ( )

Even though I read Valerie Grosvenor Myers' excellent biogrpahyy of Jane Austen on 26 Apr 1998, I decided to read this one now since I so enjoyed Tomalin's biographies of Pepys and Hardy. This biography is perfectly constucted, and tells the actually very interesting life of Austen very well. She had two borthers who ended up admirals, and other of her siblings had interesting lives. Jane is buried in Winchester Cathedral, but her memorial there makes no mention of her literary work! One probably should re-read her novels before reading this, though the book conveniently summarizes the plots of them. Tomalin is a superlative biographer. ( )