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The Life of Jane Austen
Featuring a new preface by the author, this paperback edition of John Halperin's acclaimed and controversial biography moves beyond the usually vague account of Austen's life and away from the serene and untroubled image of Austen created by a protective family. In The Life ofJane Austen, Halperin reveals a robust, vigorous, and at times difficult woman with a large and diverse circle of family and acquaintances. He documents her troubled relationship with a hypochondriacal mother and her frank dislike of the sister-in-law who usurped her childhood home, sheds new light on the shadowy existence of a retarded older brother, and sets forth in greater detail than ever before the number and nature of Austen's relations to her suitors, the romantic passages of her life, and her attitude about childbearing. Making fuller use of Austen's correspondence than previous biographers, Halperin shows us the costs exacted on a sensitive and critical personality by a society--and, frequently, a family--that paid too little attention to the predicament of unmarried women, especially those with inadequate financial means.
432 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 29, 2015
I gather that John Halperin’s Life of Jane Austen (2nd ed., 1996) is a somewhat controversial work. In his preface to the first edition, he seems to expect it to be so—but to my mind, for the wrong reason. It is his belief that people want to see Jane Austen as a sweet, cozy woman writing sweet, cozy books, and his version of the author and her work is more tart and unfeeling. Personally, I know few if any people who consider Jane Austen either sweet or cozy; she is a realist, no purveyor of comfortable fantasy; so this feels like a paper tiger argument.
As far as the facts of Jane Austen’s life went, I found little to quarrel with in this book. The state of JA scholarship has considerably advanced since I last gave it my full attention, so I learned many details that were not previously known to me. Halperin’s focused, chronological approach was helpful. Unfortunately, he does not stop with the facts. He lasers in on all sorts of trivial details—especially in the letters—to paint a portrait of a bitter, angry, antisocial spinster, often placing the most uncharitable interpretation possible on her words. Yes, Jane Austen was a spinster, and yes, marriage was important for women of her class in her day, and no, she did not suffer fools gladly; but it seems to me an overreach to conclude that marriage (and her lack of it) was the obsessive focus of her life. (Regardless of the fact that all her novels end in a proposal accepted—that is no more than a formal convention of the genre in which she wrote.) Even his own quotations of her correspondence undermine this view. I cannot see her as primarily disappointed and embittered; her books have too much of grace and forgiveness in them. And she invariably values her craft more highly than domestic activities.
The other thing I did not especially appreciate about this book was the rather simplistic way in which Halperin draws connections between JA’s life and the characters and scenes in her novels. It can be fun as a novelist to slip in little portraits of people and places one knows, and references to real events and opinions; but in an artist of JA’s caliber, these are not ends in themselves. She slips them in not gratuitously, to reveal something about herself, but to further the development of her themes and stories. There is an alchemical process that transforms such personal details into something greater and more universal. Halperin’s interpretive approach seems over and over again to minimize her genius. One example: speaking of Sense and Sensibility, Halperin says, “When Marianne says that she ‘could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both,’ she is also speaking with the author’s voice.” I couldn’t disagree more! I think Jane Austen is inviting us to laugh at such an adolescent point of view, not to embrace it. The recurrence of such reductive interpretations throughout greatly reduced this book’s value for me.
In short, I wish this had really been a Life of Jane Austen, as the title promises, and not a life with lit crit lite grafted onto it. And with less of the pop psychologizing from a man who appears to have a somewhat trite view of what goes on in women’s minds.
As far as the facts of Jane Austen’s life went, I found little to quarrel with in this book. The state of JA scholarship has considerably advanced since I last gave it my full attention, so I learned many details that were not previously known to me. Halperin’s focused, chronological approach was helpful. Unfortunately, he does not stop with the facts. He lasers in on all sorts of trivial details—especially in the letters—to paint a portrait of a bitter, angry, antisocial spinster, often placing the most uncharitable interpretation possible on her words. Yes, Jane Austen was a spinster, and yes, marriage was important for women of her class in her day, and no, she did not suffer fools gladly; but it seems to me an overreach to conclude that marriage (and her lack of it) was the obsessive focus of her life. (Regardless of the fact that all her novels end in a proposal accepted—that is no more than a formal convention of the genre in which she wrote.) Even his own quotations of her correspondence undermine this view. I cannot see her as primarily disappointed and embittered; her books have too much of grace and forgiveness in them. And she invariably values her craft more highly than domestic activities.
The other thing I did not especially appreciate about this book was the rather simplistic way in which Halperin draws connections between JA’s life and the characters and scenes in her novels. It can be fun as a novelist to slip in little portraits of people and places one knows, and references to real events and opinions; but in an artist of JA’s caliber, these are not ends in themselves. She slips them in not gratuitously, to reveal something about herself, but to further the development of her themes and stories. There is an alchemical process that transforms such personal details into something greater and more universal. Halperin’s interpretive approach seems over and over again to minimize her genius. One example: speaking of Sense and Sensibility, Halperin says, “When Marianne says that she ‘could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both,’ she is also speaking with the author’s voice.” I couldn’t disagree more! I think Jane Austen is inviting us to laugh at such an adolescent point of view, not to embrace it. The recurrence of such reductive interpretations throughout greatly reduced this book’s value for me.
In short, I wish this had really been a Life of Jane Austen, as the title promises, and not a life with lit crit lite grafted onto it. And with less of the pop psychologizing from a man who appears to have a somewhat trite view of what goes on in women’s minds.
May 21, 2019
Originally, I had rated this biography four stars, but after a few day’s consideration I have decided to change it to three stars. As part of my research in preparation for my graduate thesis, I am reading a handful of texts with increased scrutiny.
I found the biography, generally speaking, very informative. The author explains in his introduction that he decided against footnotes in order to provide the reader with a more continuous reading experience, since footnotes have the tendency to distract and break up the flow of the text. The chapter notes at the end were very helpful.
It is thoroughly researched and the writing is engaging and maintains the reader interest in the subject matter, although it is a bit outdated.
This is were my reduced rating comes into play. I understand that much work has been done on the subject of Jane Austen’s life since 1984 and that what appeared to have been fact is now being disputed as embellished by family members after her death.
For example, the notion that immediately following the news of having to move to Bath permanently Jane is supposed to have fainted. During my most recent trip to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and through my own further readings, I have to agree with their argument that it is highly unlikely Jane actually did faint.
As a very outspoken writer against the ridiculous notion of having female characters constantly faint in novels, most of her early works, especially Love & Freindship, satirizes swooning and fainting. Furthermore, Jane’s friend Martha Lloyd was present at the time and only commented on Jane’s distress about the news. Distress could mean fainting, but since no other records exist of her having a constitution prone to fainting, it makes this claim rather unlikely.
The author also makes a rather big assumption and puts the label of an outdated condition on her behaviour and the comments she writes. The author attributes her moodiness to neurasthenia.
According to my research, the term is not in medical use anymore and was used to described mental fatigue, headache, irritability and is connected with emotional disturbance.
Jane does mention throughout her letters her annoyance with loud noises and feelings of being crowded. She had a sharp wit, rather dark sense of humour and, like most of us, suffered from melancholy or even depression. This is not enough evidence to label her with a condition that has been classified as a neurotic disorder, lacking any substantial proof of such in her.
She may as well could have been suffering from mysophobia, phonophobia or hyperacusis. Or she could have just been very sensitive to unaccustomed noise, considering she grew up and lived most of her life in the Hampshire countryside, a very quiet, peaceful location compared to London or a house filled with 11 nieces and nephews.
Something else that bothered me has to do with the formatting and organization of the entire text. The edition I was able to get from the library is about 341 pages of text, without the author’s introduction, bibliography, chapter notes and index. The font used is a 10 pt., making for pages filled with extremely small typing.
There are only 8 chapters in the biography with some of them being over 100 pages long. The chapters are simply sectioned by using roman numerals, which aren’t listed in the table of contents and without any further subheadings. This made it impossible to read for longer stretches of time or make any mental notes as to where a certain point was made in relation to the rest of the chapter. I spent about 20 minutes trying to find the word “neurasthenia” in the text, which was used a handful of times. I finally gave up and was able to find it through my browser’s search history.
On a positive note, I appreciated the autobiographical connections the author pointed out between Jane Austen’s life and her works. Each book and even her teenage writings are discussed in detail and included in the chronological description of her life.
Overall, it was a rich biography that kept my attention, although I did need to take frequent breaks from reading the small text. It gave a complete overview of Jane’s life and I think it is worth a read for anyone, who is interested in the life and works of Jane Austen. It was recommended to me by my thesis supervisor and I would in turn recommend as well.
ElliotScribbles
I found the biography, generally speaking, very informative. The author explains in his introduction that he decided against footnotes in order to provide the reader with a more continuous reading experience, since footnotes have the tendency to distract and break up the flow of the text. The chapter notes at the end were very helpful.
It is thoroughly researched and the writing is engaging and maintains the reader interest in the subject matter, although it is a bit outdated.
This is were my reduced rating comes into play. I understand that much work has been done on the subject of Jane Austen’s life since 1984 and that what appeared to have been fact is now being disputed as embellished by family members after her death.
For example, the notion that immediately following the news of having to move to Bath permanently Jane is supposed to have fainted. During my most recent trip to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and through my own further readings, I have to agree with their argument that it is highly unlikely Jane actually did faint.
As a very outspoken writer against the ridiculous notion of having female characters constantly faint in novels, most of her early works, especially Love & Freindship, satirizes swooning and fainting. Furthermore, Jane’s friend Martha Lloyd was present at the time and only commented on Jane’s distress about the news. Distress could mean fainting, but since no other records exist of her having a constitution prone to fainting, it makes this claim rather unlikely.
The author also makes a rather big assumption and puts the label of an outdated condition on her behaviour and the comments she writes. The author attributes her moodiness to neurasthenia.
According to my research, the term is not in medical use anymore and was used to described mental fatigue, headache, irritability and is connected with emotional disturbance.
Jane does mention throughout her letters her annoyance with loud noises and feelings of being crowded. She had a sharp wit, rather dark sense of humour and, like most of us, suffered from melancholy or even depression. This is not enough evidence to label her with a condition that has been classified as a neurotic disorder, lacking any substantial proof of such in her.
She may as well could have been suffering from mysophobia, phonophobia or hyperacusis. Or she could have just been very sensitive to unaccustomed noise, considering she grew up and lived most of her life in the Hampshire countryside, a very quiet, peaceful location compared to London or a house filled with 11 nieces and nephews.
Something else that bothered me has to do with the formatting and organization of the entire text. The edition I was able to get from the library is about 341 pages of text, without the author’s introduction, bibliography, chapter notes and index. The font used is a 10 pt., making for pages filled with extremely small typing.
There are only 8 chapters in the biography with some of them being over 100 pages long. The chapters are simply sectioned by using roman numerals, which aren’t listed in the table of contents and without any further subheadings. This made it impossible to read for longer stretches of time or make any mental notes as to where a certain point was made in relation to the rest of the chapter. I spent about 20 minutes trying to find the word “neurasthenia” in the text, which was used a handful of times. I finally gave up and was able to find it through my browser’s search history.
On a positive note, I appreciated the autobiographical connections the author pointed out between Jane Austen’s life and her works. Each book and even her teenage writings are discussed in detail and included in the chronological description of her life.
Overall, it was a rich biography that kept my attention, although I did need to take frequent breaks from reading the small text. It gave a complete overview of Jane’s life and I think it is worth a read for anyone, who is interested in the life and works of Jane Austen. It was recommended to me by my thesis supervisor and I would in turn recommend as well.
ElliotScribbles
October 19, 2013
I'm a big proponent of historical accuracy, so appreciated this bio for documenting the everyday side of Jane Austen's personality that was not the romantic pastel-hued persona that some of her latter-day move-version fans would expect. It carefully documents the disappointments in life which sometimes gave her reasons to be sharp
Another valuable aspect of this book is its reliance on well chosen samples of Austen's correspondence and its placing of those letters in consecutive historical perspective. Reading the complete collection of her letters can,in the end, convince the reader only of the wonderfulness of the Regency postal system (that allowed almost daily interaction) and of the smallness of Jane's and Cassandra's everyday preoccupations. Whose glove was left on the piano? Flowers or fruit to trim a bonnet? (And those are just the most memorable. (Yes, almost as literary as your friends' Facebook photos of their latest meal.)
My only complaint about the book is the frequency of authorial suppositions about who was feeling what, when and what the "real" meaning of certain actions was. (And yes yes YES you GET it that Austen's relationship with her mother was critical and cool, and do not need to be reminded every time a situation arises.)I'd prefer a very light touch along these lines in any historical reportage.
Another valuable aspect of this book is its reliance on well chosen samples of Austen's correspondence and its placing of those letters in consecutive historical perspective. Reading the complete collection of her letters can,in the end, convince the reader only of the wonderfulness of the Regency postal system (that allowed almost daily interaction) and of the smallness of Jane's and Cassandra's everyday preoccupations. Whose glove was left on the piano? Flowers or fruit to trim a bonnet? (And those are just the most memorable. (Yes, almost as literary as your friends' Facebook photos of their latest meal.)
My only complaint about the book is the frequency of authorial suppositions about who was feeling what, when and what the "real" meaning of certain actions was. (And yes yes YES you GET it that Austen's relationship with her mother was critical and cool, and do not need to be reminded every time a situation arises.)I'd prefer a very light touch along these lines in any historical reportage.
February 26, 2008
Spurred on by The Complete Jane Austen on Masterpiece Theatre, I finally picked up this biography of Jane Austen that I received ages ago.
The major point of the author seems to be to make Austen out to be a human being who could be quite critical of her fellow human beings. I must admit to finding this point entirely logical given her writing, but the author claims to be arguing against a persona, created by Austen's family upon her death, of a consistently sweet-tempered person who never spoke ill of others.
Once I got over the part where the author made his "shocking" allegation that Austen was multi-faceted, I was able to very much enjoy the bits and pieces of her letters that were available. I also enjoyed his chronology of her novels. His argument is that Pride and Prejudice was her first effort at a novel. Quite extraordinary that at 22 she was able to produce such an outstanding, fully-formed novel.
It was particularly interesting to read how her own romantic disappointments, which are primarily speculated upon as there are no surviving letters with details of proposals, influenced her novels.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable biography and essential reading for Austen fanatics.
The major point of the author seems to be to make Austen out to be a human being who could be quite critical of her fellow human beings. I must admit to finding this point entirely logical given her writing, but the author claims to be arguing against a persona, created by Austen's family upon her death, of a consistently sweet-tempered person who never spoke ill of others.
Once I got over the part where the author made his "shocking" allegation that Austen was multi-faceted, I was able to very much enjoy the bits and pieces of her letters that were available. I also enjoyed his chronology of her novels. His argument is that Pride and Prejudice was her first effort at a novel. Quite extraordinary that at 22 she was able to produce such an outstanding, fully-formed novel.
It was particularly interesting to read how her own romantic disappointments, which are primarily speculated upon as there are no surviving letters with details of proposals, influenced her novels.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable biography and essential reading for Austen fanatics.
March 6, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Having been a fan of Austen for so many years, in my view Halperin has presented her as an eccentric mix of charm, brilliance, independence, fortitude, impatience and mean-ness which made the discussion about her six novels and the stories around them richer than other more light-weight Austen biographies I've read. An immensely satisfying 4 stars.
July 10, 2017
Interesting, but focuses more on Austen's letters to her sister and other family members than on her writing the novels she is famous for. The book has only one chapter about "The years of the First Trilogy" which surveys the years at the turn of the nineteen century when Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. And one (very long) chapter about "The years of the Second Trilogy", when Austen wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion (and also published Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma).
June 29, 2020
Do you want to read about how Austen was a bitter spinster, obsessed with her lost youth and the men who got away? Then do I have the book for you!
If you don't want to read some forty year old treatise on how Austen was a horrible woman who was spiteful, tacky, and didn't like children, however, I'd recommend skipping this one. There's nothing new in this book that you can't get from other sources with less of an axe to grind.
If you don't want to read some forty year old treatise on how Austen was a horrible woman who was spiteful, tacky, and didn't like children, however, I'd recommend skipping this one. There's nothing new in this book that you can't get from other sources with less of an axe to grind.
June 15, 2021
Halperin ties the novels Jane Austen wrote with her life through Austen's letters. Very interesting. Sounds like she had a sarcastic sense of humor until the very end of her life. Did she advise her niece to write only what she knew? Can we assume Jane did also? Did Jane ever have the opportunity to marry? Was her heart ever broken? Could she be a bit cruel with her humor in her letters? Was she smarter than most of the people who surrounded her?
June 14, 2024
Cette biographie était super intéressante, l'auteur s'est donné du mal à retracer la vie de Jane à travers ses lettres. Il a aussi repéré les éléments biographique dans ses romans ce qui est super !! Je ne lirai plus les livres de Jane Austen de la même façon avec toutes ses informations !! C'est dingue! Je suis ravie de l'avoir lu!🤩
Ps : Dommage qu'il n'y ait pas de version poche de ce livre et ils aurait dû espacer le texte pour une meilleure lecture.
Ps : Dommage qu'il n'y ait pas de version poche de ce livre et ils aurait dû espacer le texte pour une meilleure lecture.
December 2, 2011
Definitely a must-read if you want to know what events were going on in Jane Austen's life when she wrote each of her novels. It does not portray her in a very flattering light at times, though, so if you have an image of her as this sweet, gentle person, you might be disappointed. Not saying she didn't have these qualities, but she definitely could be sarcastic, insensitive, and unkind. I was really more interested in her life events, and this book had plenty, but they coincided with in-depth analyses of her novels. Useful if that's what you're interested in.
June 14, 2010
I'm not a huge Austen fan, just a fan. I've read her books, enjoyed her movies [!:], admire her way with words, and find more than one of her female protagonists annoying. But as even the modest fan might agree there is just something about Jane.
If you want to know what that something is you could not do better than to read this wonderful [a word I rarely use re books:] bio of Austen herself. Sympathetic, insightful and quite readable, I highly recommend it.
January 27, 2013
Rather a dull biography of Austen, I'm afraid. Some good efforts to relate her life to her books, but the subject does not really come alive.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews