A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen

by Susannah Carson (Editor), Harold Bloom (Foreword)

For so many of us a Jane Austen novel is much more than the epitome of a great read. It is a delight and a solace, a challenge and a reward, and perhaps even an obsession. For two centuries Austen has enthralled readers. Few other authors can claim as many fans or as much devotion. So why are we so fascinated with her novels? What is it about her prose that has made Jane Austen so universally beloved?

In essays culled from the last one hundred years of criticism juxtaposed with new pieces by some of today’s most popular novelists and essayists, Jane Austen’s writing is examined and discussed, from her witty dialogue to the arc and sweep of her story lines. Great authors and literary critics of the past offer insights into the timelessness of her moral truths while highlighting the unique confines of the society in which she composed her novels. Virginia Woolf examines Austen’s maturation as an artist and speculates on how her writing would have changed if she’d lived twenty more years, while C. S. Lewis celebrates Austen’s mirthful, ironic take on traditional values.

Modern voices celebrate Austen’s amazing legacy with an equal amount of eloquence and enthusiasm. Fay Weldon reads Mansfield Park as an interpretation of Austen’s own struggle to be as “good” as Fanny Price. Anna Quindlen examines the enduring issues of social pressure and gender politics that make Pride and Prejudice as vital today as ever. Alain de Botton praises Mansfield Park for the way it turns Austen’s societal hierarchy on its head. Amy Bloom finds parallels between the world of Persuasion and Austen’s own life. And Amy Heckerling reveals how she transformed the characters of Emma into denizens of 1990s Beverly Hills for her comedy Clueless. From Harold Bloom to Martin Amis, Somerset Maugham to Jay McInerney, Eudora Welty to Margot Livesey, each writer here reflects on Austen’s place in both the literary canon and our cultural imagination.

We read, and then reread, our favorite Austen novels to connect with both her world and our own. Because, as A Truth Universally Acknowledged so eloquently demonstrates, the only thing better than reading a Jane Austen novel is finding in our own lives her humor, emotion, and love.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Essays, Literary Criticism, Literature, Classics, Biography

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 2009

About the author

Susannah Carson is an American author, editor, and academic. She received her Ph.D. from Yale, after earning graduate degrees at Paris III, La Sorbonne-Nouvelle and Lyon II, L’Université des Lumières. Her work has appeared in scholarly publications, newspapers, and magazines, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, Seventeenth-Century French Studies, and the collection Religion, Ethics, and History in the French Long Seventeenth Century. Her first collection of essays was A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Authors on Why We Read Jane Austen. She also serves as the Literary Director for First Comics.

Reviews

[Melindam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Many of Jane Austen's admirers, it is true, read her novels as a means of escape into a cozy sort of Old English nirvana, but they find this escape in her pages only because, as E. M. Foster has written, the devout "Janeite" "like all regular churchgoers ... scarcely notices what is being said."
(...)
Nor do we need such a great deal of ingenuity to see that all, or nearly all, the great issues in human life make their appearance on Jane Austen's narrow stage. True, it is only a stage of petty domestic circumstance; but that, after all, is the only stage where most of us are likely to meet them.
Jane Austen's stage, then, is narrow; it is also devoted to entertainment; and we may fail to recognize the great issues of life in their humorous garb unless we are prepared to view the comic mode as an entertainment which can be both intellectually and morally serious.
(...)
Today we are less accustomed to look for universal norms in what we read ... partly because we tend to see life, and therefore literature, mainly in terms of individual experience. Jane Austen's own standards were, like those of her age, much more absolute; and as a novelist she presented all her characters in terms of of their relations to a fixed code of values." - Ian Watt: On Sense and Sensibility

"It is possible to say of Jane Austen, as perhaps we can say of no other writer, that the opinions which are held of her work are almost as interesting, and almost as important to think about, as the work itself. (...) Every established writer exists in the aura of his legend-the accummulated opinion that we cannot help being aware of, the image of his personality that has been derived, correctly or incorrectly, from what he has written. In the case of Jane Austen the legend is of an unusually compelling kind. (...)The new reader perceives from the first that he is not to be permitted to proceed in simple literary innocence. Jane Austen is to be for him not only a writer, but an issue. There are those who love her; there are those - no doubt they are fewer, but they are no less passionate - who detest her; and the new reader understands that he is being solicited to a fierce partisanship, that he is required to make no mere literary judgement , but a decision about his own character and personality ..."- Lionel Trilling: Emma and the legend of Jane Austen

This book is a delightful compilation of essays about Jane Austen herself as well as her works where classics & contemporary writers, journalists, scholars & filmmakers puzzle over her novels, her popularity, her genius & her place in literature and culture.

Recommended: to Austen lovers / haters, would-be readers

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this was a delightful way to celebrate Jane Austen July 2024! There are so many quality essays in this collection with so many good insights into Jane Austen’s characters, plots, themes, etc. I closed the book on the last essay feeling a conviction that Jane Austen is one of the best writers of all time. She doesn’t waste a word. She is completely in control of her craft. Brava Jane Austen!

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In hindsight, I don’t think reading SO much about one author in back-to-back essays is a good idea. These would have been better taken in pieces, spread over time. But this is full of insights from some well-loved and respected writers and scholars.

These really dig into how Austen did it and why we love her so much, with many, many examples from all of her novels. Most were enlightening, some were entertaining, some dry and overly-academic, and some just dull. Predictably, I enjoyed most the essays from authors I love, like Eudora Welty, EM Forster, W Somerset Maugham, Fay Weldon, Margot Livesey and Virginia Woolf.

Here are just a few take-aways:

Eudora Welty
“For nearly this long already the gaiety of the novels has pervaded them, the irony has kept its bit, the reasoning is still sweet, the sparkle undiminished. Their high spirits, their wit, their celerity and harmony of motion, their symmetry of design appear still unrivaled in the English novel. Jane Austen’s work at its best seems as nearly flawless as any fiction could be.”

Ian Watt
Austen “shocks us into seeing the disparity between proper norms of conduct and the actualities of human behavior,” and “we are shocked into seeing the cruelty that underlies social pride.”

Amy Bloom
“True love--rare, unfashionable, unlikely, and inimitable--is the only persuasion Jane Austen recommends and that’s why I love her.”
And, “Jane Austen is, for me, the best writer for anyone who believes in love more than in romance, and who cares more for the private than the public. She understands that men and women have to grow up in order to deserve and achieve great love, that some suffering is necessary (that mewling about it in your memoir or on a talk show will not help at all), and that people who mistake the desirable object for the one necessary and essential love will get what they deserve.”

By far the best essay in the bunch was by Virginia Woolf--clear-eyed, knowing and insightful praise that best answered the question of the collection’s subtitle.
“The discrimination is so perfect, the satire so just that, consistent through it is, it almost escapes our notice. No touch of pettiness, no hint of spite, rouses us from our contemplation. Delight strangely mingles with our amusement. Beauty illumines these fools.”

I’m anxious to dig into a novel now. A re-read of Emma is coming up soon.

[Vic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this intelligent book, which is a compilation of essays about Jane Austen from 33 writers. My interview with the author began like this:

A: There have been so many excellent essays written on Jane Austen! Most of them endeavor to clarify some aspect of the novels—the what, when, how, etc.—and these can be extraordinarily helpful. But then there are other essays which tackle what is, in my opinion, the big question: the why. Not, for instance, how can we understand the relationship between Darcy and Elizabeth in terms of gender relations, narrative technique, and cultural institutions, but why does their love continue to move us so?

David Lodge wrote an essay entitled “Jane Austen’s Novels: Form and Structure.” This is perhaps the most acute, elegant account of how the novels work. But it answers the “how” question, and so I chose to include his essay “Reading and Rereading Emma” instead, for there he is after the essential “why”.

Q. Did you have an order in mind when you arranged the essays and why?

A. Some of the essays are about one novel, some are about a couple or a few of her works, and some are about everything she wrote from the juvenilia to her unfinished novels to her letters. In the end, we decided to order them loosely: essays about a single novel appear in a series, and they are separated by two or three more general essays that are united by theme (e.g. morality, films). When I reread them through in this order, I was pleased to discover that the same thoughts would rise and fall in the smaller waves as well as throughout the length of the book. Austen’s vitalism, for instance: towards the beginning, Eudora Welty writes that Jane Austen’s novels are about “Life itself”; in the middle, later, Amy Heckerling notes that everyone is “BUSY” and Eva Brann observes that the heroines are full of “liveliness”; and in the penultimate essay, Virginia Woolf hears “the sound of laughter.”

Q: Do you agree with Benjamin Nugent’s observation that a Jane Austen novel is the “ultimate talky French movie,” because in essence nothing happens except for a series of conversations between characters?

A: I do agree. Austen’s use of dialogue is complex—she uses it to sketch character, but (as Diane Johnson notes in her essay) she rarely uses it to advance plot. And yet, at the same time, most of the climactic scenes are all about words—their use and misuse. In Pride and Prejudice, it’s Darcy’s hilariously misworded proposal; in Mansfield Park, it’s the drama surrounding drama, or the debate over whether or not to perform Lovers’ Vows; in Emma, it’s Emma’s slight of Miss Bates during the picnic at Box Hill; in Persuasion, it’s Wentworth’s letter written in counterpoint with the conversation he overhears between Anne and Harville. So words are at the center of whatever it is that they get wrong or right, whatever it is they need to learn in the course of the novel. Figuring out how words work in a social setting is, as Ben so astutely notes, part of a timeless coming-of-age process.

Q: James Collins made a number of powerful statements, saying that Jane Austen helped him clarify ethical choices and figure out a way to live his life with integrity. One of the reasons that she has credibility in his eyes is her total lack of sentimentality. C. S. Lewis comments on Austen’s hard core morality, and Amy Bloom paints a picture of a woman who sees the world around her through a clear pane of glass. These authors helped me to clarify why I am so drawn to Jane Austen. In your introduction you hope the reader will formulate an answer to the question: why do you read Jane Austen? I will reformulate your question: what was your reason for assembling this book and why are you drawn to Jane Austen?

A: It seems like there’s a whispered suspicion in our culture that Reading is dead—that we hardly ever read anymore and, when we do, we’re still not really reading. Hopefully this isn’t true, but the sublime Robertson Davies was certainly haunted by this fear when he issued his call to arms: “What I call for is a multitude of revolutionary cells, each composed of one intelligent human being and one book of substantial worth, getting down to the immensely serious business of personal exploration through personal pleasure.”

This collection of essays is intended to help people figure out how to really, really, really enjoy reading. There are different kinds of reading. There’s the light reading of a Jane Austen spin-off, and that provides a certain amount of fun. And then there’s the rich reading of a Jane Austen novel, and that provides not just quick delight but insight into how our hearts and minds work. We frequently think of reading as somehow separate from the act of living, but with the best literature—with Austen’s novels—reading becomes just as grand, if not grander, than the other bits and acts of life. So I read, and I read Austen, not only because it teaches me to think, imagine, and relate, but also because it’s a critically important and deeply indulgent pursuit.

Q: Tell us a little about yourself! Your short bio on the book flap intrigues me. Unlike provincial Jane, whose life was quite circumscribed, you are truly a woman of the world.

Yes! It’s telling that Austen’s work continues to have something to say to modern women who are so very different from her in all sorts of quotidian details. I started off in much the same place, however; my first memories date from the years my family lived in Hockwold-cum-Wilton, a little village in East Anglia. We moved back to the Napa Valley when I was still small, and I grew up in the country where I could trek across the countryside to visit friends. The scope changed when I went away to college, for I found myself increasingly addicted to books: first philosophy, then literature. While I was writing an M.A. thesis for San Francisco State University on Madame de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves, I fell head-over-heels in love with 17th C French novels. To read these rare novels in all their original mustiness, I moved to France. After a maîtrise at Lyon II, I did a D.E.A. (or M.Phil) at Paris III. In Paris, I lived in an apartment above a chocolaterie on the Ile St. Louis and walked around Notre Dame every day on my way to class at the Sorbonne. I then moved to New Haven to pursue a doctorate at Yale, and I’ve just returned to San Francisco to finish a dissertation on danger in French novels of the Ancien Régime.

What would Jane Austen’s life have been had she lived, read, and written today? Would she have traveled the world for her craft, or would she have been just as content with stationary flights of fancy? Would she have racked up degrees and indulged in “serious” study, or would she have stuck to her depictions of three or four families in a little village? No matter how we live it out, I think it’s inevitable that modern bluestockings somehow associate themselves with Austen: she was such an important pioneer, and it’s hard to say where we would be today had she never written.

Thank you for your insights, Susannah! It has been a pleasure talking to you. For the readers of this blog, I will post my review of the book soon.

More information about Susannah on Random House's site: Susannah Carson is a doctoral candidate in French at Yale University. Her previous degrees include an M.Phil from the Sorbonne Paris III, as well as MAs from the Université Lyon II and San Francisco State University. She has lectured on various topics of English and French literature at Oxford, the University of Glasgow, Yale, Harvard, Concordia, and Boston University. Order the book at this link.

Susannah's site sits at this link: Why Jane Austen

[Meredith (Austenesque Reviews) · Rating 4 out of 5]

OVERVIEW:
A Truth Universally Acknowledged is a collection of essays from literary scholars, contemporary authors, literature professors, critics, novelists, playwrights, and academics, to name a few. Some of these writers are men and others are women, some are at the beginning of their career and others are at their apex, some lived during the nineteenth century while others are alive during the twenty-first century. In their individual essays each writer ponders, analyzes, evaluates, explains or enumerates the reasons why they read, reread, and admire the novels Jane Austen. Some do it very formally with a lot of academic jargon while others casually praise, celebrate, or defend their love for Jane Austen. The essays range from three pages to thirteen pages in length and cover all six of Jane Austen's major novels including several of her minor works as well.

MY READING EXPERIENCE:
I read this compilation over the span of three months, reading two to three essays a week. I decided to put a post-it on each essay's first page, so I could leave myself some notes reminding me the themes and topics addressed in each essay. In addition, I found it helpful to give each essay a rating on a scale of 1-5, 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest. Here is a breakdown for each rating: 5 stars (seven essays), 4 stars (thirteen essays), 3 stars (nine essays), and 2 stars (four essays).
My average rating was: 3.69

MY ASSESSMENT:
Some of my favorite essays were ones that brought new understanding and insight to Jane Austen's novels. I greatly enjoyed C. S. Lewis's analysis and comparison of various Austen heroines, and how he illustrated the similarities in Catherine's, Marianne's, Elizabeth's, and Emma's periods of disillusionment and periods of awakening. In addition, I took pleasure in A. S. Byatt's and Ignès Sodré's conversation about Mansfield Park and family relationships. Moreover, I was delighted with Donald Greene's systematic rebuttal of Jane Austen's so-called “limitations.”

However, there were some essays that weren't as enlightening and at times felt a little on the heavy and pedantic side. In addition, some writers seemed to focus a bit too much on themselves and not enough on Jane Austen. I was a little disappointed with one writer's narrow observation of Edmund and Fanny as odious prigs, and I didn't care for another writer's argument that Henry Tilney and Catherine Morland are incompatible and their future happiness improbable!

While some may grumble about some of the essays in here being old and outdated, I found that aspect pleasing and I am delighted to have all these essays conveniently located in one tome. However, I would have enjoyed a little bit more diversity amongst the writers, perhaps including writers from different cultures and countries would have added more variety. (Jane Austen is all over the globe!) Furthermore, some of the essays were a little too similar to each other and felt a bit too redundant. There seemed to be an abundance of essays on Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, but not very much said about Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility.

CONCLUSION:
A Truth Universally Acknowledged is wonderful compilation that can be appreciated by die-hard Janeites and new Austen admirers alike. You don't have to be an Austen scholar to enjoy this novel! I recommend this anthology for any Jane Austen fan who is interested in delving into some critical or scholarly work.

Austenesque Reviews

[Abigail Bok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Any collection of essays by diverse authors is necessarily an uneven affair, and this one is further complicated by drawing its contributions from a century’s worth of writers. Austen interpretation and even knowledge of her biography have changed radically over that time, so some claims made by writers in this volume are simply incorrect, and others sound pretty basic. Also, a handful of novelists are included, who approach writing about Austen very differently from (and less rigorously than) the critics. On the whole, however, the essays are well chosen, if you embrace the latitude in the selections.

I took notes in the margins, underlined insights that suggested new ideas to me, and sometimes corrected or argued with the authors. On a personal note, it was painful for me to reread Harold Bloom’s Persuasion chapter from his bloated book The Western Canon: I had the misfortune to copyedit that book and quarreled vigorously with Professor Bloom on the query slips. It was disheartening to see that he apparently changed nothing at all, including even outright errors like treating the title of the book as Austen’s decision, when she called the book The Elliots and it was her brother who chose the name Persuasion after her death. I forfeited a longstanding professional relationship with the publisher in order to go to the mat with the Great Man, and so far as I can tell, nothing came of it. Sorry, but that chapter is still blather and a walk through the ocean of The Western Canon will not get your feet wet.

On the positive side, even after a half-century of immersing myself in Austen scholarship, I found a number of essays valuable (some of them despite having read them before): Benjamin Nugent on P&P, C. S. Lewis’s thoughtful reflections, A. S. Byatt’s and Ignes Sodre’s brilliant conversation about MP, James Collins’s chapter also about MP, and even Virginia Woolf’s dated essay, which shows her very much intrigued by The Watsons, a work more deserving of notice since it stands at a major pivot point in Austen’s career. The editor, probably wisely, stakes out a middle-of-the-road position in the introduction, avoiding all the extreme takes on the author, from feminist to postmodernist and beyond.

I imagine any reader interested in thinking more deeply about Jane Austen’s novels will find nuggets of insight in this assemblage.

[fatma]

DNFing at 68%. i wanna say ill come back to this someday, but the essays were so painfully boring and uninspiring and i have zero desire to finish this for the sake of finishing it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Rikke · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen.” - E. M. Forster

An intelligent and very interesting essay collection about Jane Austen and her timeless novels. This anthology surprised me with its great variety of topics and authors; writers such as C. S. Lewis, Austen-devotees such as Janet Todd, literary critics such as the famous Harold Bloom and even the brilliant E. M. Forster contributes to this lovely little collection. It makes for great entertainment, a lovely read and a broad array of new perspectives on our all-time favorite writer.

Perhaps a three-star rating seems rather unfair, but as I skipped a few essays (the ones on Emma especially got a little too repetitive for my personal taste) I couldn't bring myself to rate this higher. After all, a collection of essays will always be a mixed experience. As the 33 essays varies so greatly, it is perhaps impossible to love each and every one of them.

Among my favorite essays was the one by C. S. Lewis. I had not expected that his essay would be the one to touch my heart, but it did. In his essay Lewis discusses the transformation, the coming-of-age process each of Austen's heroines goes through, with the exception of Fanny Price and Anne Elliot. With a beautiful insight and a careful examination he puts my love for Anne Elliot into words; something I never could quite manage myself.
This collection does contain some delightful treasures. There is a lovely essay by Benjamin Nugent titled "The Nerds of Pride and Prejudice" which discusses Mary's forgotten and overlooked part in Austen's most sparkling novel, a hilarious reflection upon Austen's Emma by Amy Heckerling, the screenwriter of 'Clueless', while Rebecca Mead joins in with six wonderful reasons to read Jane Austen.

I will end this review by quoting the brilliant Rebecca Mead: “Why do we read Jane Austen? Because Jane Austen read Jane Austen, and knew it was as close to perfection as any of us can hope for.”

Enough said.

[Girl with her Head in a Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my full review: https://girlwithherheadinabook.co.uk/...

I stumbled over this book during a visit to Mr B's Emporium in Bath (magical place!) and have been saving it ever since for my next Austen in August. I had never heard of it but was instantly smitten with the premise. The book's subtitle is "33 Reasons Why We Can't Stop Reading Jane Austen". My only complaint might be that surely there could be more. A Truth Universally Acknowledged draws together essays from writers both old and new, with contributors as diverse as E.M. Forster and Amy Heckerling. For an Austen fan, this is a rare treat.

As a disclaimer, this is a book very much for those who like to read Jane Austen. Other than Amy Heckerling's fabulous account of how she came to adapt Emma into Clueless, there are few mentions of the film adaptations and the subject matter tends to concentrate very closely on the original texts. Carson has grouped the essays more or less thematically, so we get a few in a row on one novel and then on the next and so on. Yet while I was expecting Pride and Prejudice to overshadow all of the other books, Carson manages to keep the coverage pleasantly even.

I found this book utterly fascinating in how it captures so many of the famous quotations about Austen as a writer in one place. We have Kingsley Amis' remark that the prospect of dinner with Mr and Mrs Edmund Bertram would be quite a chore, and also C.S. Lewis' comment that Fanny Price is a Brontë heroine in an Austen situation. There are many others. It was interesting to see how opinions on Austen shifted over time - she is a different figure as seen through the eyes of E.M. Forster or Virginia Woolf compared to the more modern contributors such as Benjamin Nugent. We have rewritten Austen repeatedly yet the process has been so gradual that it only becomes clear with collections such as these.

Many of the authors commented on Austen's interest in social mobility. Mr Darcy is explicitly stated to be a good master and landlord and so he retains his estate. The Elliots of Kellynch are less responsible and so they have to decamp to Bath while the noveau riche of the Admiral and Mrs Croft take over. Anne Elliot cringes that this means that conditions will improve for the Kellynch tenants. All across Austen's fiction, the aristocracy are in a state of slow decay. The television adaptations which have become so ubiquitous over the past twenty years are celebrating a world that Austen's writing was seeking to challenge. This is one of the many reasons that I will always prefer the books.

Like What Matters in Jane Austen?, this book is clearly marketed to an audience of fans rather than academics. However, I can see that readers with some kind of English Literature background are likely to find it more enjoyable. Brian Southam's essay on the text edition wrangling was worthy of something out of A S Byatt's Possession - fascinating for me but perhaps not something that the casual Austenophile would find entertaining. I also had to read Lionel Trilling's essay very slowly and even parts of it out loud to completely follow it. However, despite the density, it all paid off in the final paragraph which was sublime.

There is a good deal of disagreement between the writers; W. Somerset Maugham contents that Austen was beautiful while Martin Amis calls her plan, etc, etc. Yet despite all of this, this cacophony of opinion is united in one thing - reading Austen is an interesting thing to do. I absolutely loved this book. Forever afraid of being a Book Snob, I am always slightly shame-faced when I read something quite so unashamedly literary but I devoured the whole book in under a week. It was brilliant to read such a diverse range of analyses on Austen's craft as a writer.

There is no avoiding the fact that this is not a light read. Some of the essays are more engaging than others. However, I felt that every single one brought me a fresh point of view on Austen and on her place within the canon of English literature. My favourite essay though was perhaps that of Rebecca Mead, who provided six reasons why we read Jane Austen (the first of which was 'Because We Can't Ask Her To Dinner Even Though We'd Like To') and which closed with the killer line 'Why do we read Jane Austen? Because Jane Austen read Jane Austen and knew it was as close to perfection as any of us could hope for.' Definitely my favourite non-fiction read of this year's Austen in August, I think that this is a book I will be revisiting for years to come.

[Cynda · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 Stars, Definitely enjoyed the articles I read. I found some of my m writers of my earlier years discussing my long-time beloved writer Jane Austen: Eudora Welty, C S Lewis and Virginia Woolf. I also found the much-respected and challenging-to-understand Harold Bloom.
This type of book--a collection of essays and articles--was more popular pre-internet days. How convenient to have a bound collection of essays and articles about a favorite or much-referenced writer or literary movement. Now we can just Google "what Eva Brann says about Jane Austen novels".
Not well the essay/articles are serious. Some are downright entertaining. In "Six Reasons to Read Jane Austen," Rebecca Mead starts out with no introduction, just a headline: Because we can't invite her to dinner, even though we'd like to. So some of the essay/articles treat the subject lightly and gracefully.
Still for someone--like me--who has a special respect for Jane Austen this book would be an enjoyable curl-up-with-interesting-book book. Thank you Melindam for your recommendation of this book.

[Noninuna · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

A collection of essays from famous writers about Jane Austen's books and why we read them. I've gather a lot of different perspectives on her books; some offered how her writing captivates the readers, some gave opinions on what she tried to deliver through the stories and some explained why he/she kept reading the particular title. I had fun reading this!

[Aarti · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book collects 33 essays by writers, readers, movie producers and Austen scholars- all dedicated to celebrating Jane Austen. It's a perfect book to publish at this time since Jane has never been cooler. She is an action figure, she is a detective, her characters have been made into vampires and zombies, there are countless movies and books surrounding her and her stories. This collection of essays, though, is about READING Austen's novels. Not reading the sequels. Not watching beautiful adaptations. No, it's about reading the witty, ironic and fabulous Jane's words herself.

On that level, this collection succeeds. Everyone in it reads and enjoys Austen, and they're all willing to share with readers why they do so. However, 33 essays is a lot. There are (in my opinion) far too many essays on Mansfield Park. This would be fine if they varied a bit, but they basically all say the same sort of thing: Fanny Price is boring, but she is a moral and kind person. Yes, I get it. I don't need to read that five times.

And that, in my opinion, is the shortcoming of this collection. When you have 33 people talking about one author who wrote six books, you get a lot of repetition. I can't tell you how many times the same quotes were used- from "It is a truth universally acknowledged" all the way down to Austen's "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory." It got aggravating.

I think I would have preferred fewer essays in this book- perhaps one on each book Austen wrote, one on her earlier writings, one on her unfinished ones, and then a few on the experience of reading her as a whole. It was great to read so many opinions on Austen, but as everyone in the book loved her writing, it got a bit repetitive in general (though the specific points made were interesting on their own).

However, that said, this is a book most Janeites will want to own and enjoy. It is fun to read, though I recommend reading the essays over a longer period of time than I did. And it will make you want to read Austen again. As soon as possible.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were a few essays I didn't get to because I had to return the book to the library. Of the 20 or so essays I did read, only three were duds. Two were simply outlandish, and one was an excerpt from a longer work which didn't really make sense to me and seemed like an example in how not to do reader response theory analysis. Clarke's essay was a stand out, as were several others, but names escape me at the moment. I will be buying this one to add to my literary theory and criticism shelf. The one thing that bums me out is that this isn't the collection I was hoping for. About 18 years ago I read a maroon volume of essays and book reviews on Jane Austen which was in chronological order and began with pieces written by her contemporaries. It had siloghettes of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett on the cover with filigree around it. I can't recall the title. I did borrow it from a library. Well, both volumes are worth reading, and do have some of the same essays in them. If anyone knows the title of the maroon essay collection let me know. I'd like to have both in my collection.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me reread Austin. For those Austinites I'm preaching to the choir but for those of you who turn up your nose at such, "old fashioned, boring, mindnumblingly sexist books," I say poo on you! You narrow minded ninny! Jane Austin's one of the founders of the modern novel and one of (if not the) the first to write from an exclusively woman's points of view. Stop acting like you know how an 18th century women would feel because that's how YOU would feel.

If you're thinking about reading Austin for the first time this book is a really good introduction. It's actually full of introductions from all kinds of people, authors, editors, professors, feminists, script writers, movie producers and random historical people. As a staunch supporter and lover of Austin it was interesting to see who got Austin the way I did and those who didn't (also referred to as idiots;)

Some of them were funny, some were boring and some made me go, "Huh?". Definitely a recommended read.

[Beverly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of mainly 20th century criticism of Jane Austen. For those with no familiarity with Austen criticism, there can't be a better place to start. For me, with some familiarity, there is redundancy here. One good feature is the inclusion of many essays by novelists like Jay McInnerny, Margaux Livesey, and Virginia Wolfe. The essay by Amy Heckerling, who adapted Emma for film as Clueless was fun. The two that I found most insightful were those that knowledgeably set Austen into her period: by scholar of the literature of the 18thc, Ian Watt, and by contemporary novelist Diane Johnson, who also talked about writers' tools.

[Gretchen Rings · Rating 3 out of 5]

The essays are more literary criticism than social commentary, which is what I was hoping for., e.g., why all the recent spin-offs like "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"?! Still, an incredible compilation of writers from Virginia Woolf to E.M. Forster to Jay McInerney on what makes Jane Austen one of the greatest writers of all time.

[Courtney Johnston]

Abandoned, because when I cracked open the first entry, I realised I had absolutely no interest in hearing why 33 people think I should read Jane Austen, and more interest in actually re-reading Austen for myself.

[Ava D · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was exquisite. So many different points of views and perspectives of great authors, all about one woman who changed the romance world!
What I loved is how they all managed to tell original and interesting stories of their individual experience with Jane Austen. And the editing by Susannah Carson was very well done.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely assortment of essays. Some were a little too academic for me, but most were like chatting with friends about favorite books.

[Jenn Estepp · Rating 3 out of 5]

At this point, I think I'm too far removed from my days as an English major/someone who flirted with academia, to have much patience for literary criticism. Which the weakest of these essays is very entrenched in. I enjoyed the contributions from the novelists a bit more, generally speaking, and I think the handful of represented authors who did both were probably the strongest. And it was nice to actually read a handful of essays which are oft-quoted and pretty famous. But there was lots of repetition, lots of pretension, lots of stuff that didn't particularly resonate with me. Inevitably, I suppose, but still somewhat disappointing.

[Abbey · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars! This was interesting, if at points snobbish and pedantic. It’s a bit dated, but still interesting to see opinions of Austen over time.

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so maybe I did skim a few and did not read all 33 essays, but there was some good bits with what I did read. It was cool reading authors like Eudora Welty, E.M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf gush about Austen. I also enjoyed reading Amy Heckeringly's "Emma" to "Clueless" musings. Not a novel neglected here, even "Mansfield Park" gets plenty of love Even Mary Bennett, the misunderstood nerd, got an essay devoted to her. ITA with the writer, she really should have ended up with Mr. Collins, poor thing.

[Cora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, it took me a couple of years of reading this in the evening while my husband took his turn reading a bedtime story to our daughter, but I finally finished it. Not bad, but some of these kind of annoyed me. The one author that mentioned her own novels nearly as much as those of Austen, the male author who used the word "bitch" to describe an admittedly less than likable female character - kind of jarring and off-putting, to me. My favorite essay by far was the one by Virginia Woolf - well-written, thoughtful, warm, and interesting.

[Rory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of essay attempts in various ways to breakdown the mystique of the works of Jane Austen. Done from a slew of appriachs, some more clinical than others, each author brings their own love and joy of the Austen canon to the mix.

Each book gets their own series of essays and it actually made me think more about my own techinque as a writer. It also made me reconsider what i like and dislike about the various novels and has made me eager to read all of the works in short order!

[Starry · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains short essays by English professors and well-known writers about reading Jane Austen. It was interesting to consider the positive and negative critiques and to consider the why, how, and what of her writing. Convinced me to read all Austen's novels again, both because they are great reading and because I want to think about them in light of these essays.

[Margie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it.
33 writers (some of them great) on why they love or read Jane Austen. They disagree on which book is the best, which heroine is the most developed, which ending the most true. It was wonderful to immerse myself in reading the intelligent and sometimes witty thoughts of others who appreciate Austen.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am an Austenite, and I have read Jane Austen's 6 great works many times through. That being said, I really enjoyed this. Only a few essays were almost too abstruse for me to understand, and none of it was Freudian (thank goodness). The essay be Virginia Woolf was particularly insightful. I think if you aren't fairly familiar with the works of Jane Austen, you wouldn't enjoy it quite as much.

[Lamplight]

So much fun! It's nice to know there are ppl out there far, far more obsessed with Jane than me. Also, there are some pretty strong words about those who prefer Bronte, as well as about those who are crazy enough to diss Bronte. note to self- really must read something in addition to jane eyre...

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite a nice collection of essays and critiques of Austen's work ranging from popular (Amy Heckerling) to classic (Virginia Woolf) to academic (Harold Bloom).

[Elizabeth Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thoughts here:

http://www.wasatchwoman.com/blogs.php...