Austen

The world has long followed the exploits of the Dashwood sisters, the Bennet sisters, the Elliot sisters and the character, who her creator referred to as, “my Emma”. But what of the authoress, Jane Austen, herself? Recently there has been a spike of interest in Austen’s own story – are there parallels running between her beloved characters and their romantic ups and downs and her own life, we wonder?

Becoming Jane is Hollywood’s answer to providing a glimpse of Jane’s early romantic life and is mostly a fairly accurate retelling of her star-crossed love for a dashing Irishman. The film I liked better is Miss Austen Regrets (hidden as a special feature with the 2008 BBC version of Sense and Sensibility). It picks up near the end of Jane’s short life, when she is still wrestling with the consequences of turning down the financial security of what would have been a comfortable, but loveless, marriage in her twenties. In making that choice, she provided herself the freedom to continue writing, building a home instead with her beloved older sister, Cassandra, but never achieving independence from her parents.

Many biographies of Jane have been written and we have two of the best in our collection: the short, impressionistic, Jane Austen by Carol Shields, who brings the perspective of being an award-winning novelist herself to the story; and, for a detailed, well-researched account of Jane’s life, try Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomlin. It is a good story, really, written with intelligence, perception and wit - I think even Jane would find much to recommend it!

In Tomlin's fine book, we learn how the young Jane’s genius was nurtured within the embrace of a large, loving, literate family – participating in full-scale theatricals with her brothers (think Mansfield Park) and reading aloud on winter evenings, first from the works of contemporary novelists and then from her own budding short stories and early novels. We can be grateful that she had the support and freedom to develop her prodigious talent.