Jane Austen: A Life

This is a biography that works as a fascinating and moving story in its own right. Claire Tomalin uses every available scrap of evidence to put together a surprisingly convincing portrait of Jane Austen as a (then) largely unrecognised genius and thoroughly professional writer, who was nonetheless an active member of a large and interesting family. The book dispels a lot of myths - including the long-held notion that Jane was writing about her own life in those six perfectly-crafted novels. Far from being a quietly contented domestic being, she is shown to be an observer, almost an outsider, in Regency society - someone who could be quite uncomfortable to have around, with her sharp observations and witticisms - but deeply appreciated by close family members and friends.

It's surprising to learn that her cousin had an affair with Warren Hastings, that their daughter's husband was guillotined in the French Revolution, that a brother founded a bank which crashed, that Jane knew about the slave trade and was in sympathy with abolition, and had probably read Mary Wollestonecraft on the rights of women. This is not an uneventful, sheltered life as so often portrayed! Claire Tomalin lifts the veil and shows Austen to be a modern woman making her way in an uncertain and changing world. The unrelenting pressures of money - or the lack of it - make Jane Austen's meagre and belated earnings from her novels especially poignant, bringing her finally some small measure of financial independence and wider recognition.

Whether you're coming to this book fresh from an Andrew Davies TV adaptation, or are a more serious scholar, this is a fascinating read and a very convincing portrait of a much-loved but still misunderstood genius.

Sensitive yet truth-seeking (0/1 people found this helpful)

Tomalin's portrait of Jane Austen is sensitive and yet does not shy away from seeking the truth behind the myth. Well written, I found this an engaging read and, also having read Jane Austen's letters, was interested in Tomalin's drawing of Jane's close relationship with her sister Cassandra which Tomalin investigates in depth.

After reading this biography, it is easier to feel closer to Jane Austen and her life, and yet somehow, some mystery remains.

Much Truth Is Spoken In Jest (0/2 people found this helpful)

Sensitively written with a wry sense of humour, this book re-examines all the evidence of Jane Austen's life and seeks to find the truth behind the family tradition. Austen is revealed to be very un-prim, constantly concerned with money (shades of Sense and Sensibility) and heavily patriotic (in a way that her lack of historic references in her books belies). The episode of her engagement and her cancelling of it is well covered here to show her in a different light as is her doomed love affair which I'd never heard of before reading this. What is most startling though is the lack of consideration her family seem to have shown her again and again moving her from pillar to post and using her as a drudge despite the fact they apparently held her in affection.

I loved this book and the author's teasing out of harsh truths from platitudes and her consideration of the family as a whole as well as the individual personalities. Most convincing was Tomalin's discussion of whether Austen's brother (who was a failure as a writer) unconsciously or consciously denied her publicity and fame in her life and in the aftermath of her death. Certainly the destruction of nearly all of her letters by various family members was a tragedy that leaves so many gaps in Austen's life it takes great dexterity to piece the remaining evidence together, dexterity which Tomalin is fortunately blessed with.

A fresh and revealing biography of a well-loved author (4/4 people found this helpful)

Claire Tomalin offers a radical re-assessment of arguably the nation's favourite author in her account of the life of Jane Austen. There is no room her for the prim, endearing and content `Aunt Jane' that was the core of her image for most of the 20th century. In tracing Austen's life from her birth in a Hampshire parsonage in 1775 to her untimely death in 1817, Tomalin reveals first a home-loving child unhappily sent away to school and then an independent minded young woman who resents her dependence on wealthier relatives and prizes the rare times when she has the luxury of leisure to write.

Eminently readable, this biography places Austen not only within a family and locality, reveals the extent to which her connections provided close links to the politics and social trends of her times. Aunt to the illegitimate daughter of Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal and the loving cousin of a French émigré, Austen had no opportunity to live a life constrained to the round of local society. Tomalin shows that, schooled with the sons of West Indian slave owners and her father the trustee of an Antiguan sugar plantation, Austen cannot have been unaware of the contemporary debates on abolition and chattel slavery, as some her most ardent admirers would have it. Tomalin's brief but thorough analysis of each of Austen's major work's shows how such issues, fair from absent from Austen's novels, are subtlety worked through by a sophisticated and socially aware, professional author.

One of the real delights of this book is the account of the all too brief time in which Austen could enjoy the fruits of her talents, following the publication of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice: the small income she derived from her novels gave her a degree of personal freedom while the recognition of friends and family provided satisfaction, even if the limited public recognition she obtained made her uneasy.

Many of Austen's letters and her diaries were destroyed by her family - her sister Cassandra and, later, her niece, Fanny, but Tomalin exploits the available material to the full, studying not only what is left of Austen's correspondence and notes but also the correspondence and journals of those who knew or met her. And yet this is more than a mere history. With intelligence and sympathetic deduction and Tomalin provides a more rounded, and more credible, picture of her subject than many Austen biographers have managed, something which amounts to a fresh, revealing and intimate biography.

A work of detection as much as biography (11/12 people found this helpful)

Very little of Jane Austen the person remains for any biographer to get their teeth into. Most of her letters were destroyed by family members presumably anxious about their contents. Claire Tomalin shrewdly speculates on why this could be, concluding from what evidence she can find that while Austen was a dutiful daughter living a simple life with her family, she was also clever, outspoken and provocative. Virtues that seemed, at various times, to unsettle and disturb relatives and friends and made her possibly disliked by some.

The other amazing thing is that there exists only one line drawing to show us what Jane Austen looked like. There is no painting or silouette of her, and the line drawing was done by her sister Cassandra, not a professional artist. The rest of the Austen family all had their portraits painted at some stage. This adds to the mystery, unless a portrait exists somewhere that hasn't been unearthed yet.

Somehow, through clever use of what few letters exist and some thorough historical research, you get a real sense of the time and circumstances that Austen lived through and how those experiences created the novels we are left with today. It's a brilliant and fascinating read that very quickly drenches you in Austen's social and emotional world.

Claire Tomalin

Reader Reviews:

Definitive and fascinating (2/2 people found this helpful)

Sensitive yet truth-seeking (0/1 people found this helpful)

Much Truth Is Spoken In Jest (0/2 people found this helpful)

A fresh and revealing biography of a well-loved author (4/4 people found this helpful)

A work of detection as much as biography (11/12 people found this helpful)

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