Becoming Jane Austen - Softcover

Spence, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847250467 ISBN 13: 9781847250469

Publisher: Continuum, 2007

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Book Description:

Jane Austen was a 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.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1847250467
• ISBN 13: 9781847250469
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 312