PDF Ebook Becoming Jane Austen, by Jon Spence
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Becoming Jane Austen, by Jon Spence
PDF Ebook Becoming Jane Austen, by Jon Spence
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Jon Spence's fascinating biography of Jane Austen paints an intimate portrait of the much-loved novelist. Spence's meticulous research has, perhaps most notably, uncovered evidence that Austen and the charming young Irishman Tom Lefroy fell in love at the age of twenty and that the relationship inspired Pride and Prejudice, one of the most celebrated works of fiction ever written. Becoming Jane Austen gives the fullest account we have of the romance, which was more serious and more enduring than previously believed. Seeing this love story in the context of Jane Austen's whole life enables us to appreciate the profound effect the relationship had on her art and on subsequent choices that she made in her life.
Full of insight and with an attentive eye for detail, Spence explores Jane Austen's emotional attachments and the personal influences that shaped her as a novelist. His elegant narrative provides a point of entry into Jane Austen's world as she herself perceived and experienced it. It is a world familiar to us from her novels, but in Becoming Jane Austen, Austen herself is the heroine.
- Sales Rank: #878423 in Books
- Published on: 2007-07-03
- Released on: 2007-05-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.81" h x .65" w x 5.06" l, .72 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 312 pages
From Booklist
Jane Austen's quiet life is not very rewarding biographical material. While acknowledging that "there has been a long-observed tacit agreement that Jane Austen's work is off limits to the biographer as a source of information about her life," Spence, professor emeritus of English literature at Doshisha University, Kyoto, nevertheless scours Austen's letters and juvenilia for clues to the people, events, and impressions that helped shape the writer. He sees a connection, for example, between the family background of Tom Lefroy, whom it seemed for a time that Jane might marry, and the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice. Glamorous family friend Eliza de Feuillide is woven in various ways into the work, especially in the character of Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park. He says of Jane's letters, "She takes the most ordinary, insignificant bits of information and effortlessly enlivens them with wit and fresh turns of phrase"--an apt summary of the appeal of her fiction. Spence makes an interesting case, and his book, though academic in tone, will appeal to serious Janeites. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
'Jon Spence's 'Becoming Jane Austen' is one of the best half-dozen books published on Austen in the last quarter century.'
'This is a book full of wisdom about [Jane Austen] and her art.'
Joseph Wiesenfarth, JASNA News (Joseph Wiesenfarth)
'Becoming Jane Austen' is a good, traditional biography. Clearly written, jargon-free and pleasant to read, it covers familiar ground without any sense of fatigue and makes the most of the material.'~ Peter Washington, The Literary Review (Peter Washington)
'Jon Spence has given us the most cogent portrait of Jane Austen's literary life to date.'~ Julia Barrett, author of 'Presumption', 'The Third Sister' and 'Jane Austen's "Charlotte"', British Heritage Magazine (Julia Barrett British Heritage)
'It is the small incidents that Jon Spence puts under the microscope in his entertaining and sensitive biography.' 'Jon Spence is painstaking, delicate, full of insight - a somehow fitting, friendly biographer.' ~ Joceline Bury, Jane Austen's Regency World Magazine (Joceline Bury)
'Jon Spence's book has all the virtues of a well-researched and original study. Hard to write anything new about Jane Austen these days, but Spence, in his own quiet and unobtrusive way, has done it.'~ John Bayley (John Bayley)
"Becoming Jane Austen gives the fullest account we have of her falling in love with the charming young Irishman Tom Lefroy." (Lucy Whitson, Evening Express)
Title mentioned, April 2007 (Stephanie Cross Observer)
Mention in The Bookseller
"This biography does uncover some interesting facts about the novelist's antecedents and family, showing them to be just as obsessed with fortune and gentility as the Dashwoods and the Bennets." (The American Spectator)
"Spence meticulously unpacks the evidence available to him...and lays the probablilities before us in writing that is charged with its own kind of electricity. His great achievement is that by the end of Becoming Jane Austen it is indeed possible to see how Jane became Jane Austen, the great writer of English literature." (Sydney Morning Herald)
mention in 'Books on Radio' (The Bookseller)
'A delightful book ... I have enjoyed it immensely.' (John Bayley CBE, Writer and Literary Critic)
Review in Eighteenth Century Current Bibliography, October 2007
"Fascinating...full of details that add color and texture to what we know of Austen." —The Record-Courier
(Mary Louise Ruehr)
'Jon Spence's 'Becoming Jane Austen' is one of the best half-dozen books published on Austen in the last quarter century.'
'This is a book full of wisdom about [Jane Austen] and her art.'
Joseph Wiesenfarth, JASNA News (Sanford Lakoff)
'Becoming Jane Austen' is a good, traditional biography. Clearly written, jargon-free and pleasant to read, it covers familiar ground without any sense of fatigue and makes the most of the material.'~ Peter Washington, The Literary Review (Sanford Lakoff)
'Jon Spence has given us the most cogent portrait of Jane Austen's literary life to date.'~ Julia Barrett, author of 'Presumption', 'The Third Sister' and 'Jane Austen's "Charlotte"', British Heritage Magazine (Sanford Lakoff British Heritage)
'It is the small incidents that Jon Spence puts under the microscope in his entertaining and sensitive biography.' 'Jon Spence is painstaking, delicate, full of insight - a somehow fitting, friendly biographer.' ~ Joceline Bury, Jane Austen's Regency World Magazine (Sanford Lakoff)
'Jon Spence's book has all the virtues of a well-researched and original study. Hard to write anything new about Jane Austen these days, but Spence, in his own quiet and unobtrusive way, has done it.'~ John Bayley (Sanford Lakoff)
"Becoming Jane Austen gives the fullest account we have of her falling in love with the charming young Irishman Tom Lefroy." (Sanford Lakoff)
Title mentioned, April 2007 (Sanford Lakoff Observer)
"Spence meticulously unpacks the evidence available to him...and lays the probablilities before us in writing that is charged with its own kind of electricity. His great achievement is that by the end of Becoming Jane Austen it is indeed possible to see how Jane became Jane Austen, the great writer of English literature." (Sanford Lakoff)
mention in 'Books on Radio' (Sanford Lakoff)
'A delightful book ... I have enjoyed it immensely.' (Sanford Lakoff)
"Fascinating...full of details that add color and texture to what we know of Austen." —The Record-Courier
(Sanford Lakoff)
About the Author
Jon Spence is an American and was educated at King's College, London University. He has lived abroad for many years and now divides his time between London and Sydney. He is the editor of A Century of Wills from Jane Austen's Family and Jane Austen's Brother Abroad: The Grand Tour Journals of Edward Austen. He acted as Historical Consultant on the film Becoming Jane.
Most helpful customer reviews
70 of 72 people found the following review helpful.
Now that they're making a movie of this book . . .
By a reader
. . . it's time for BECOMING JANE AUSTEN to get the readership it deserves! If you adore Jane Austen's novels but aren't really excited about reading a biography or a collection of her letters, this is the book to get. I've never read anything quite like it -- it combines skilled biography with excerpts from thousands of family letters, all the while tying the whole thing together as a coherent and very, very readable story of a fascinating family and a funny, smart young writer. Spence has done such a great job with the primary source materials (wills, juvenilia from JA's brothers as well as herself, and all those letters) that you really do get the feeling you're finally hearing the true story, instead of the official version the Austen descendants developed for early biographers.
I'm not going to spoil the big surprise in this book, but suffice it to say that you will be intrigued -- and convinced -- of events in Jane Austen's life that have not been discussed elsewhere. And Spence's style, which will remind you more than a little of Jane Austen's, makes for easy, enjoyable reading. He has a nice sense of irony and picks up on subtleties in the letters, for instance, that a straight-through reading of the correspondence would probably never yield. (Not to me, anyway!)
This is literary biography at its very finest: impeccably researched, invitingly presented, and true to the spirit of its subject. I'm almost afraid to see the movie -- but not at all surprised that Hollywood snapped up this gem of a story.
47 of 49 people found the following review helpful.
Very engaging pop-history woven with lit crit
By Customer
Spence is a scholar but here he is writing for the public. He appears to draw heavily from published anthologies of Austen's letters, the Austen family will, etc., rather than primary sources themselves. This is information that readers could have sought out on their own or found in another biography. Where Spence shines is in his inter-weaving of family biography with literary critique, and, perhaps more controversially, his attempts to explicitly link events/people in Austen's life to her fictional characters and senarios.
I would consider this a fairly edgy enterprise relative to the work of "traditional" historians. Still, the discipline has, like others, changed over the past several decades, and not only recognizes the impossibility of objectivity, but allows for more explicit individual interpretation. And in fact, most of Spence's extrapolations are not only fascinating but well-supported; for example, his contention that Austen's own family history laid the groundwork for the three Ward sisters' differing marriages (in Mansfield Park) makes perfect sense. A minority of his contentions appears to have involved a bit too much creative interpretation, but one can simply research those on one's own or come to one's own conclusions.
To read this book is to be impressed by the very fragility of life--especially for childbearing women--in early 19th century England. The book is riddled with so many early (under 30) and childbirth deaths, it appears amazing women agreed to marriage in the first place. But that, of course, is Spence's second achievement: impressing upon us the deeply precarious financial position in which women found themselves, unable to earn their own keep and forced to rely on the support of a brother, husband, or the bequest of a dying relation.
My only problem with the book is the slightly prosaic writing style, the repeated use of slangy words (i.e. tetchy) and the puzzling reliance on second-person address (i.e. "You see.." "You read this and feel..."). I have never read a work by a professional historian to refer directly to readers and not to the general populace ("one feels..." "one can see...").
Novel-like in its readability, thoughtful and unafraid of contention, Becoming Jane Austen deserves a place on the shelf of every English lit or history fan, Austenite or no.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Best Bio of Jane Austen
By gilly8
A life-long Jane Austen fan, and one who re-reads her books frequently, I have also read several of the most noted Jane Austen biographies, and have found this to be by far the best, most thorough, most intriguing. Spence, a Professor of English literature, clearly spent a great deal of time as a detective, readng family letters, diaries, and published memoirs of family members. He does not beat the reader over the head with "Jane Austen as a proto-feminist" as some biographies have done; but he also recognizes and make clear the female perspective in that era, the Regency era of England. Woman were not yet as overly protected and made to appear as childlike as they would be in the upcoming Victorian age, but for a woman of a genteel family, as Austen was, it was expected she would marry, or if not, she would spend her life living with her parents or after their deaths with married siblings, and being of help to her large extended family. Instead, Austen seems to have accepted her "spinster" status at quite a young age, and aside from fulfilling all the duties of the spinster aunt in a very large family, she also began, from childhood on, to write quite seriously. The publication of her first book, under the the name of "anonymous", caused a great stir, became a hugely popular book, and soon her anonymity was destroyed and she became an early celebrity. This biography presents her in the context of her time and in her role within her large extended family--other biographies have,in my opinion, seemed to present her as a postmodern woman writer would be seen, that is, as an individual, with freedom and the ability to make choices. Austen was typical of her times, and was outwardly conventional and self-effacing. Her later celebrity, as Spence points out, coming shortly before her early death, led to several relatives writing memoirs about their famous relative. Unfortunately,most of these were written in Victorian times with a Victorian view, and made every attempt, consciously or not, to present Austen as the Victorian female ideal that she never was. A worthwhile biography to read, for anyone who loves Austen's works, and one which is well researched, very readable, and without an agenda.
NOTE: a movie was made of this book---please avoid it.
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