Becoming Jane Austen: A Life [Paperback]

Jon Spence (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2007

Jane Austen was a very great novelist and one of the central figures of English literature, but she herself lived a quiet and uneventful life, mostly in the two Hampshire villages of Steventon and Chawton. Jon Spence's new biography focuses its attention away from the wider literary and intellectual currents that informed her writing and instead concentrates on the immediate influences on her life and work. "Becoming Jane Austen" shows how Jane Austen's own personal experiences resonated throughout her work, from her juvenilia to Sanditon. Two people, above all, affected her life and caught her imagination. The first was her flirtatious and exotic cousin, Elisa de Feuillade, married to a French count who was later guillotined. The second was the young Irish lawyer Tom Lefroy, with whom Jane fell in love and whom she hoped to marry. Jon Spence traces the deep emotional impact that her encounters with Eliza and Tom had on her and shows how she worked this out in her life and in her work, including in her major novels.

Editorial Reviews

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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"In his revealing biography, Spence (English, Doshisha Univ., Kyoto, Japan) examines Austen's development as a novelist."--Henry L. Carrigan, Jr., Library Journal

"Spence makes an interesting case, and his book, though academic in tone, will appear to serious Janeites."--Mary Ellen Quinn, Booklist

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 294 pages
• Publisher: Hambledon & London (March 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1852855614
• ISBN-13: 978-1852855611
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,899,420 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now that they're making a movie of this book . . ., March 28, 2006

By 

a reader (Clemson, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Becoming Jane Austen (Hardcover)

. . . 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:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very engaging pop-history woven with lit crit, August 2, 2007

By 

Nef (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Becoming Jane Austen (Paperback)

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.

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jane's Circle, August 24, 2004

By 

C. Thurber (Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Becoming Jane Austen (Hardcover)

How narrow was Jane Austen's world? She has generally been viewed as writing from her observations in the parlor. Spence broadens that view and does an excellent job of presenting Jane in the context of her wide circle of family and friends. He weaves in the incidents and issues they encounter and then shows how Jane transformed them in her fiction. One of the fascinating points is how often she disguised the person by inverting the gender. My one criticism is that the genealogical charts should have been placed in a better position, since I constantly referred back to them. They could also have been even more extensive with maybe even a listing of the people in her life. I re-read Austen's books every few years and so I am very familiar with her work. This book provided new insight to me. I will re-read Sanditon in particular for his critic of this last work. The constant financial uncertainty Jane faced comes out strongly in the book. At the time of her death she had received some money, but still faced uncertainty and was unaware of the full extent of her success as a novelist.