Customer Reviews

Jane Austen's Letters

5 star:		(10)
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3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a Jane Austen, Regency period and history fan I loved this book. Highly recommend it for fans of any of the above. We get to peep into Jane Austen's real life and real love for her family in the wonderful letters to her sister and her friends. We learn about the period's social mores, what they did for entertainment, the joys and losses of living in the late 1700's/early 1800's. The author carefully explains geographical names and the intricate web of family and friends in the back of the book. I read it with two bookmarks to keep track, but it's easy to read. A must to round out your Jane Austen library.

Proving that Austen was as fun and readable in her everyday letters as she was in her novels. These letters (about 160 of them) are great fun to read. The biting wit of her novels is clearly evident here.

As pretty much most people know Jane Austen was incredibly close to her sister Cassandra and most of these letters are from Jane to Cassandra while they were separated. After Jane's death Cassandra destroyed goodness knows how many of Jane's letters and all of her own - so this small collection is all that is left - along with some to her neices and other family members.

The collection was first put together in the 1930's by Chapman, but Le Faye has uncovered a few more since then (as I understand it).

The book is great value for money. Le Faye has done a phenomemal job in providing all the support information you will need to read and understand any aspect of the letters. They are footnoted clearly. There is a biographical and Topographical index in here - along with a chronology of Jane's life, and a chronology of the letters themselves - and if all else fails there is a comprehensive index.

For the history buff there is a great amount of really useful everyday infomration - for instance in 1813 apples were scarce in the country and cost 1 pound 5 shillings a sack. And insight into Jane herself - in April 1811 she is searching for a novel called 'Self Control' but says "I am always afraid of finding a clever novel too clever." Perhaps something that guided her own writing.

Over 600 pages of great value reading, pure pleasure and wealth of information.

This collection of Jane Austens letters is a must for all fans who would like a peek inside the mind of the author. It is the most extensive collection to date and Le Faye has done quite a lot to make it as accessible as possible. It features all of the surviving letters from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra plus some letters to some of her brothers, a niece, etc. It also includes three letters from Cassandra to various relatives from the time immediately after Jane Austens death and so also shows Jane Austen from another persons perspective. The only drawback of this book is that all the notes are in the back, arranged by the number of each letter, and so you find yourself flipping back and forth quite a lot but it is an annoyance well worth putting up with.

I have read quite a few bibliographies on Jane Austen but there is no competing with her own words. If you have any kind of interest in Jane Austen as a person then you should definitely get this book.

Primary sources are always the best in understanding the mindset of a period. Here we have a thick collection of Jane Austen's letters, which have been very well annotated by the editor. The contrast between the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson (who lived in the same period, published by the famous courtesan in 1825) are hilarious. Witty but staidly Anglican Jane at one point savagely attacks the very high aristocrats romping their scandalous way through Harriette's world, that "race of Pagets". Jane Austen's letters let us have a glimpses of what daily life in the English gentry and aristocratic class was like in Regency England; seeemingly trivial details such as the buying of Wedgwood china with the personal crest, buying the breakfast set separate to the other china sets (longing to see what a Regency breakfast set looked like! The breakfast set is mentioned in Sense and Sensibility) are actually very difficult to find out about, it is not something historians generally write about. The notes by the editor are fascinating and could lead to further research, for example how did one lord prove his title after being a Dublin potboy? And the gentleman who divorced his wife after the proper lady decided to become a professional actress...usually it was the other way around, the actress became a proper lady! The biographical details added by the editor on various gentry/aristocratic families mentioned in Jane Austen's letters are very tantalising.

I would like to mention that this page is quite misleading. This book is not at all the same as the one labeled "Jane Austen's Letters (Paperback)" for $19.79, which is what I thought I had ordered. In fact, that was the page that I had originally gone to when I added it to my cart so how I ended up with this is beyond me. When I removed this from the box I was baffled, as I clearly recalled a color cover and that it had been described as being over 600 pages.

This book has a cheap cover and poor binding, and is only 112 pages long. It includes only the bare bones of her correspondence; that is, her letters to others. Letters to her or explanations of what events were occurring at the time the letters were written are completely absent.

A word of warning: double check what ends up in your cart when ordering. I added the $19.79 "Jane Austen's Letters (Paperback)" to my cart from that page, but was charged for and received this cheap, flimsy little book. Looking at the pages for the books, it seems that the same reviews appear on both of them, and that they are considered one and the same. The "look inside" feature on the cheaper version even redirects you to a preview of the more expensive 600+ page version. Apparently these books are considered one and the same but let me assure you, they aren't!

I will now have to go back and buy the edition I thought I had ordered. However, I will be using Barnes and Noble.com this time to ensure that I get what I order.

This is the best edition of Austen's letters ever published. It includes recently discovered letters from Jane Austen or about Jane Austen. It also provides details regarding the postmarks on the letters and an index (with description!) of the many people, servants and friends in Austen's life. While this book doesn't provide much cultural context or criticism, serious students of Jane Austen will learn more about Austen's authorial project and her daily life. While we can never know Austen as a person, we can get a sense of her life, her family, and the pressures she faced on an intimate level. It is interesting to find the paralells between Austen's letters and her novels. Astute readers will find that Austen was witty and sarcastic outside of her novels as well. I used this book as a resource in a college class in which we only read Austen's novels, and found her Letters to open up the texts in suprising ways. An excellent tool that should be part of your Austen collection!

Being one of those who received this book only to be completely disappointed when the pages fell out, I turned to the Amazon reviews to see if others were disappointed as well. Having read the reviews, I am completley confused. I think these are two different books! My book is 112 pages, has no bibliography, no editor's notes, nothing outside of the letters themselves. I can't even find an editor's name! It is published by Pavilion Press, Philadelphia in 2003.

As I read the reviews of people who love the book, they describe a completely different book.

What gives?

I originally bought this volume thinking it was the edited full volume of letters. Instead, it was a small volume with a very poor binding that did not have any notations. Spend the extra money and get the edited volume of letters by Deirdre Le Faye (which is the third edition of the volumes of letters originally edited by R. W. Chapman). That volume includes notations/footnotes on all the letters and a biographical and topographical index. Fortunately since the book binding was defective and there were colored stains on several pages, Amazon took this back and gave me a refund. I bought the Le Faye letters used through Amazon for about the same price.

I was looking for an unabridged edition of her letters, rather than a selection, and was thrilled to find this; then when I received it, I found it badly bound, the pages falling out as soon as I opened the book, badly typeset, with no footnotes or other explanatory material. The fault is my own, for not looking up the publisher beforehand; I will certainly avoid them in the future.

THis compilation of Austen's letters is very poorly bound. The quality of paper, binding and cover is just terrible. I bought it as a gift and was too embarassed to actually give it to the recipient.