Valerie Grosvenor Myer (1935–2007)

Jane Austen (1775–1817) hat in ihrem kurzen Leben sechs Romane veröffentlicht, die zu den unvergänglichen Werken der Weltliteratur gehören. Valerie Grosvenor Myer geht in ihrer Biographie u. a. den Fragen nach, woher Jane Austen in ihrem engen, äußerlich ereignislosen Dasein als unverheiratete Pfarrerstochter ihre Stoffe genommen hat und wie sie sich als Schriftstellerin in der damaligen Zeit hat durchsetzen können. Eine anschauliche Beschreibung des Lebens und der gesellschaftlichen Konventionen in England im späten 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert.… (more)

This is a well-written attempt to discover the undiscoverable. Jane Austen, like many of her contemporaries, was a prolific letter writer, but her sister Cassandra burned most of those letters shortly before her own death. So Austen fans are left with a number of superficial details about Austen’s life, interspersed with comments from the few surviving letters. Austen led a fairly retired life, having never married, devoted to her extended family, but struggling always with what was known as “genteel poverty.” The book is chock-full of details, and acute analysis of character, but ultimately leaves a frustrating gap in the inquiring reader’s mind – who was the young man Austen may have been (and probably was) in love with, and why did she turn down his proposal? An interesting and detailed account of the life of a spinster aunt in Regency England – but less vivid to me than the memoirs of some of our American diarists.… (more)

3069 Jane Austen Obstinate Heart: A Life, by Valerie Grosvenor Myer (read 26 Apr 1998) In 1997 two new biographies of Jane Austen came out and I decided to read this one. It is a delicious book, very worthy of its subject. The book tells much trivial things but her life (born 16 Dec 1775, at Steventon, Hampshire, England, died 18 July 1817 at Winchester, Hampshire) was outwardly uneventful so her story must be told by what happened to her. There is a lot of detail available, and at first this book was not chronological, but it got to be and it is an excellent account. Austen only attained her present status in the literary canon in the 20th century--between 1817 and 1870 there was only one complete edition of her work. Since, there have been countlsess.This was a most enjoyable and worthwhile reading experience.… (more)