Jane Austen: Her Life

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Aptly subtitled, this biography concentrates on the novelist's personal and family life at Steventon, Bath, Chawton and, finally, Winchester, with full treatment of the writings given only in the Chawton period. ``A detailed and winning portrait emerges of Austen and her relationships with friends and family,'' remarked PW. Photos. (May)

Library Journal

With access to newly discovered Austen family manuscripts, Honan creates in rich detail contexts for Jane Austen's life: familial, political, historical. Yet the person at the center is curiously absent. Austen's letters are used to convey facts about her daily life without sympathetic probing. What underlines Honan's difficulty with realizing this woman's everyday identity is his suspicion of its significance. He stresses her connection to the activities of her male relatives, especially her naval brothers, as if that is what gives her, and her art, credence. But what makes a naval war importantly real, and those ``three or four Families in a Country Village'' a ``near-vacuum''? A misleading approach to a brilliant woman who lived and wrote about the experience of most women throughout history: domestic life. Suzanne Juhasz, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder