Jane Austen: Her Life

by Park Honan

A profile of Jane Austen offers new insights into her private world and her literary reputation, revealing the experiences and observations upon which she drew to produce such masterpieces as "Pride and Prejudice" and "Northanger Abbey"

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, History, British Literature

454 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Leonard Hobart Park Honan (17 September 1928 – 27 September 2014) was an American academic and author who spent most of his career in the UK. He wrote widely on the lives of authors and poets and published important biographies of such writers as Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

Honan began his career specializing in Victorian literature but later broadened his scope, becoming an expert in the Elizabethan period. From 1959, he taught at Connecticut College and then Brown University before relocating permanently to England in 1968, where he taught at the University of Birmingham until becoming Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Leeds in 1984. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through extensive research of diaries, letters, and memoirs by Jane Austen and her family, Prof. Park Honan paints an all-encompassing portrait of Jane Austen and her times in his biography, Jane Austen: Her LifeJane Austen: Her Life. This 400+ page biography includes family trees, a bibliography, extensive notes, and an index.

Prof. Honan does more than just delve into Austen’s personal life. He explores the social, cultural, political, and economic climate of her time and traces the influences on her writing. He argues it was her family, especially her brothers and her sister Cassandra, who had the greatest influence on her work. She was an astute observer of people, frequently incorporating their words and mannerisms into her writing. And she was an avid reader. As a young woman, she was shy in the presence of strangers, enjoyed parties and balls, but was not averse to making snide remarks about people with whom she had little respect or tolerance. She was happiest when surrounded by family and a close circle of friends.

By situating each of her novels in its social and cultural context, Prof. Honan provides valuable insight into Austen’s work. He analyses her novels and traces some of the words and ideas articulated by her characters to those of real individuals with whom she interacted or whose works she read.

This is a thoroughly exhaustive study of Austen—perhaps, a little too exhaustive because Prof. Honan includes copious details and meandering digressions, many of which have little relevance to either Austen’s life or her work. For example, he delves into extensive details about Britain’s war with France, including several pages of information about various sea battles. He provides lengthy genealogies of even the most minor characters who briefly made Austen’s acquaintance and who had no obvious influence on her life or her work.

Flooded with copious amounts of information, the reader has to sieve through what is relevant and what is of little or no significance to Austen’s life. This is unfortunate because there is much to be admired in the study. But the inclusion of tedious and lengthy details which have no bearing on Jane Austen or her work detract from an otherwise informative biography.

Recommended with reservations.

My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

[christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading biographies are tricky endeavours since you never know whether what you read will reinforce your opinion of the author or extinguish all faith in their abilities.

I had always known that Austen came from marginal wealth and fell into relative poverty, I knew Austen lived through the time of the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution but none of this really mattered when reading her novels before: but now they do. The fact that Austen chooses to not mention the political and social upheavals she personally or marginally experiences, for example, points to what matters (or doesn't) to her. This is disheartening for an Austen advocate. Now, her choice in focusing on marriages and matchmaking take a darker, more avoidant turn.

Honan's biography also has its problems, as so many reviewers have pointed out, most notably his inability to cull immediately relevant information for this biography but instead, vomits as much information from wayside characters that sometimes do (but often don't) have any impact on Austen's personal life. I understand the reason for this: he is presenting her life in full magnificence but he is also a bore in his meticulousness. What does end up happening is that we as readers see the characters she would eventually shape into her own novels as they are, devoid of authorial flourish. And this is what I'm getting at: her life was filled with people of little consequence, including Jane herself, who is presented as quite a snob, moody, and judgmental.

Unfortunately, after reading Jane Austen: Her Life, I find it hard to separate the woman from the art. The problem is, Art owes a lot of its privileges to their audience: it is within the audience to imbue what meaning we choose, to see nuance where a suggestion is made, to project our own personalities and experiences in the spaces in between and therefore, we afford artists, sometimes rightly but mostly wrongly, as our representatives. Biographies strip that romance and, in the hands of a good biographer, we see them with less bias.

So Honan achieves his objective: to present Austen's life as thoroughly and accurately as possible, lifting the veil and exhibiting Austen's life through painstaking and oftentimes tedious detail, but it doesn't mean I have to like it.

Two stars then: for onerous material cited but mostly from my own disappointment.

[Jeslyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This took some time for me - I often felt Honan was off in the weeds, pulling in neighbors, friends, acquaintances, etc. in a biography purportedly about Jane Austen. But this is as much a biography of the construction of her novels as it was about her, and Honan shows how indivisible Jane is from her writings. It does make the reading denser, and sometimes tedious, but overall I liked it and was glad I read it.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but once again I'm relistening to a book-on-tape. I checked out some other books-on-tape from the library after finishing this one, and they ended up being so insipid and flat after the real-as-flesh life of Jane Austen, that I just couldn't return this one to the library, just yet. So, I'm catching more details the second time around, read in a clipped formal British accent.

Besides, Kirstie Lovell just loaned me "Becoming Jane" on DVD last week, and I had to go over the details of Jane's relationship with Tom LeFroid (sp?)and compare the film's version with the biographical account. If you haven't seen BJ the movie yet, know that there's a scene reminiscent of "A Room with a View" wink wink (to the moon!).

Anyway, this biography was written in the 80's, I think, and was a tad feminist, but so enjoyable, dripping with details of the real-life characters and events who inspired Lizzie and Jane Bennett, the Miss Dashwoods, Emma, and, of course, Missstuh. Daahrcy.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Emily Dickinson, details of Jane Austen's life do not seem to have revealed much of who she really was. We can only know from her writing, and that's how it should be for any writer. Who cares if Jane set fire to her older brother (which she did not), for example, or Hemingway cracked John O'Hara's walking cane over poor John's head at the Algonquin (which he did, and maybe that matters)? We have learned to love these authors through their stories. Biographies of authors are essentially gossip, giving us a chance to view them from a different perspective, which is why I love to read them, not only of authors, but of artists, actors, composers, military heroes, and politicians. A biography is essentially a novel anyway told with a straight face.

[Beth]

This book is dense and very scholarly.

Though I love Jane Austen’s novels, her life isn’t fascinating reading. She loved her big family and lived the mostly quiet life expected of an unmarried lady of her time. That’s about it.

The excitement was in the life of the mind and in her very careful attention to her writing, but that is hard to discern, much less write about.

Still I’m glad I read it. It reminded me of all she had to overcome and what a short life she had to write her books.

[Cindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Jane Austen and wanted to learn more about her. I borrowed this book from my mom, but just could not get into it. I had it for more than a year and finally gave up. I have since read other things about Jane Austen which I liked more.

[Jossalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought in Jane Austen's house in Chawton, Hampshire.
delightful bio.

[Jessica Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew going into this biography that it was exhaustive and, according to some, a tad meandering. So, I was prepared. Once I gave up on trying to keep track of who was who in the extended family and friends realm, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I understood why Honan wanted to include so much information on the culture and surrounding events as it did clearly impact what Austen wrote. No other biography has given me such a clear and intimate portrait of Austen. Would recommend only to the die-hard and academically inclined Austenite.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book analyzes Austen writing instead of her life. What was in it about her life was good and informative, but I wish they would have kept it to just her life.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read several biographies of Jane Austen in the past. I was surprised how much new info was here: new to me, but also new to the world in 1987. Honan had access to a lot of family documents that had not been used by other biographers. He does dip into a fair bit of speculation about Austen's feelings and thoughts, but that is to be expected. I liked how much I learned about her relationships with her brothers and how much their literary and naval and clerical experiences shaped her. Not recommended as the first bio to read of Austen, but definitely of interest to the dedicated fan and scholar.

[Ian Banks · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhaustive, but never exhausting, bio of the beloved author. Mr Hoban goes into an astonishing amount of detail on Ms Austen’s life but it never feels extraneous or irrelevant: even the lengthy passages on her brother Frank’s naval career feel important simply because he was an outstanding and important figure in his own right as well as having experiences that informed details and characters in Austen’s novels. I hesitate to call it definitive simply because my own knowledge of the era and field is so limited but this is one of the best literary biographies I’ve ever read.

[El · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jane Austen was a brilliant author and her works are some of my favourites, but this book could have been half the size and still had everything about her in it. There were so many totally unnecessary branches off into information about her other family - most of whom were well-known enough without their own right to have their own biographies anyway - that it was barely possible to keep a real track of Austen's life.

[Stitchywoman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't finish this book. It wasn't so much of a biography but a literary annotation of her books. At times I found the book confusing, not sure if the author was talking about Jane Austin's family or book characters. I really had no understanding of Jane Austin as a person than I did before reading this book.

[Margie Dorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be the best Austen biography I’ve read, and I’ve read a lot of Austen biographies. This one was extremely well researched and gives a solid and detailed understanding of her life and times, her family and friends and how it all connected to her works. I recommend it highly.

[Julie Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping to read more of Jane Austen herself and her writing life. This biography should be subtitled Jane Austen Her and Her Family’s Life.
Ended up scanning this book, searching for the parts written just about Jane.

[Marybeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Detailed but a dull read. Reading it started to suck to joy of Austen out of me so I put it aside.

[Maggie]

Good writing. Seemed sometimes like conjecture was presented as fact. Had the view that reading aloud was Austen’s version of a writer’s workshop, which is very interesting. And after her death, her family did their best to describe her as loved and lovable in spite of being a writer and a woman prone to books.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as Jane Austen Biographies go...this one is okay. Honan is more interested in placing Jane Austen in context with her family and social surroundings and all that was going on around her, than he actually is in her, which is unfortuneate as she is interesting in and of herself.