Caroline Sanderson

This is a short biography of the great author, covering her personal as well as literary life, and serves as a useful introduction to her world, with just the right amount of detail presented in a straightforward narrative. It supplemented what I learned at the Jane Austen museum in Bath last Sunday. The author challenges the common perception that Jane strongly disliked Bath, pointing to evidence in her own words, and in those of some of her characters, that points in both directions; it show more should also be remembered that her memories of the city would have been understandably soured by her last home in one of the poorer districts of the city, after the family was forced into relative poverty following the death of her father. The later moves to Southampton and then to her final home at Chawton in Hampshire unlocked the most creative period of her tragically short life which saw the final publication of her first novels during the last six years of her life, when she was finally able to find the physical space to be creative. Hers was a long-lived family, with almost all her siblings and her mother living into their seventies or eighties, but not for Jane, who sadly died at the age of 41, after battling illness for a year or more, and is now buried in Winchester Cathedral. show less

This book is one woman's journey through all the various places that Jane Austen lived and wrote about in her novels. Caroline Sanderson perfectly blends the novels and characters with the historical settings, she ignited my desire to go and walk in the footsteps of Jane Austen for myself. I really enjoyed her witty humor as she blended two completely different worlds into one, and I adored her own conclusions and interpretations about Austen and her writing.

A useful and enjoyably-written work in the spirit of the Opies.