What Jane Austen's Characters Read [and Why]

by Susan Allen Ford

The first detailed account of Austen's characters' reading experience to date, this book explores both what her characters read and what their literary choices would have meant to Austen's own readership, both at the time and today.

Jane Austen was a voracious and extensive reader, so it's perhaps no surprise that many of her characters display a similar appetite for the written word, from Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice to Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. Beginning by looking at Austen's own reading as well as her interest in readers' responses to her work, the book then focuses on each of her novels, looking at the particular works that her characters read and unpacking the multiple (and often surprising) ways in which these inform the reading of Austen's works. In doing so, it uses Austen's own love of reading to invite us to rethink the way in which she thought about her characters and their lives beyond the novels.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

First published July 11, 2024

Reviews

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such good fun! Ford opens up Austen's world by exploring the books the Austen family read and what Austen's characters read. In her view, each Austen novel interacts with a certain type of literature (or several): gothic, conduct, poetry, drama, and more. I thoroughly enjoyed her insights and interpretations and am itching to re-read Austen's whole ouevre (even the books I re-read this year!). One of my favorite tidbits is biographical. Ford first heard of Austen through Irene Hunt's Up a Road Slowly. I love that book, and while it wasn't my first glimpse of Austen, it was the first time I met a character who loved Austen, and turned my readerly sights toward her.

Highly recommended for Austen fans who enjoy literary criticism. The book is academic but quite fun to read. If it seems daunting, consider reading the corresponding chapters as you read Austen's books instead of reading straight through. The chapters don't require reading in a certain order, though I would recommend starting with the first chapter on Austen and her family. It sets up the way Austen obtained and read books, and how she shared her work with their family and their responses to it. No surprise, everyone had a different take on Fanny Price, and they're exactly the same set of opinions as what I've seen from readers today, my own included. Delightful.

Hearty thanks to Ford for this splendid effort. I can only imagine the long hours she spent poring over eighteenth century books in archives, examining digitized texts, and reading scads of conduct literature. While I love Austen, I can't abide the eighteenth century. I'm so glad someone else did the work, and did it so well. What Jane Austen's Characters Read (and Why) will breathe fresh air into Austen studies for years to come and I look forward to seeing what's inspired by this marvelous book in the future.

Some interpretations I'm mulling over...

Northanger Abbey: Eleanor Tilney is actually the gothic heroine of the novel? And Henry Tilney fits the gothic hero mold? Haste to the re-read! (And I'm even more eager for someone to write a retelling of NA focused on Eleanor Tilney.)

Pride and Prejudice: Ford makes a convincing case that Mr. Collins was reading a particular set of Fordyce's sermons that Austen's original audience would have known. All of P&P interacts with this conduct literature, alternately upholding and critiquing it. The characters subvert the standard conduct advice in some way, even as certain ones (Charlotte, Mr. Collins) seem to think that they uphold it. Austen seems to be deliberately poking holes in conduct literature's reasons for marriage with all the marriages in this book, especially with the Darcys and Collinses.

Mansfield Park: This novel gets two chapters, one devoted to drama and one to Fanny's reading. Ford discusses the choice of Lover's Vows in the most fascinating way and I learned so much from it! It had always bothered me when readers interpreted that element of MP as Austen dismissing all theater as immoral. Ford shows how other types of theater are supported in the narrative, interprets Henry Crawford's character based on a popular actor whom Austen saw at the time of writing, and notes how Fanny reads Shakespeare. I loved how Ford explored Fanny's reading as an element of her character growth.

Ford covers all the novels, even Sanditon, but this is what stood out to me the most and what I wanted to remember.

[Kirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.25-4.5

[Lona Manning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Elliot wistfully quotes poetry to herself. Fanny Price loves the poet Cowper. And of course novels are a major topic of conversation in Northanger Abbey. Austen's first readers would have been familiar with all these books and poems in a way that we aren't today. Few of us have read Lover's Vows, the play put on at Mansfield Park, or Fordyce's Sermons, but Susan Allen Ford has read everything that Austen's characters read and shows how Austen uses these allusions in her novels. Why, for example, did Austen choose Shakespeare's Henry VIII for Henry Crawford to read aloud instead of one of his better-known plays? Fanny is reading a history of the 1793 British embassy to China. Is she reading the version by Staunton, which devotes the first volume to the voyage getting there, and "includes foldout maps of the voyage that begins in Portsmouth, proceeds to Madeira and the Canary Islands, heads across the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro for water, and then moves back across and south to round Africa and head toward China." No doubt Fanny would be thinking of the travels of her midshipman brother as she read this volume.
This book explores the different genres extant in Austen's time: the conduct, book, sentimental and gothic novels and not only places Austen's novels in context with these works, but explores how Austen related to and critiqued these works by her allusions to them.
This is a book for devoted Janeites--someone who recognizes a reference to "Mr. Collins" and "Fordyce's Sermons." If you are ready for a deeper knowledge of Austen and her times, if you want to go into her novels with the some of the background knowledge her first readers had, if you want to learn more about the literary allusions lurking between the lines, you'll appreciate this book.

[S. Hurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly one of the best-written academic volumes I've ever read. Ford's prose is concise and enjoyable to read, and she never strays from her topic. She delivers a clear, easy-to-follow argument throughout the book that offers enlightening insight into the world of Jane Austen's fiction. Would recommend to anyone eager to learn more about what Jane Austen's characters read (and why)!