Jane Austen discussion
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Introduce Yourself Part Two
Rachel wrote: "WELCOME, Kathleen!Happy to have you with us!"
Thank you Rachel!
Hello everyone. My name is Mirta. I was born in Argentina, grew up in California and now live in Nevada where in my spare time, I am an indie author.Persuasion, I think, is my favorite Austen novel but, I have been mesmerized by Colin Firth's portrayal of Mr. Darcy for many a year! Although my last novel is not a Regency fiction, it is Austen- inspired and there is a definite "nod" to P & P. I hope to have a true JAFF ready for publication very soon and am looking forward to sharing it with all of you.
Happy reading and Best Regards!
Welcome Mirta! Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel too and Colin Firth's Darcy is my favorite Darcy!
Mod
Another Firth/Darcy fan here! Glad to have you with us!
Thanks for the warm welcome ladies!Rachel wrote: "WELCOME, Mirta!
Another Firth/Darcy fan here! Glad to have you with us!"
QNPoohBear wrote: "Welcome Mirta! Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel too and Colin Firth's Darcy is my favorite Darcy!"
QNPoohBear wrote: "Welcome Mirta! Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel too and Colin Firth's Darcy is my favorite Darcy!"
Mirta, Rachel and QNPoohBearYou might enjoy my book about the other side of JA's novel P&P -
Darcy's Story by Janet Aylmer
My web site is - www.janetaylmer.com
I just popped over to your website. My goodness!! Very impressive! Janet wrote: "Mirta, Rachel and QNPoohBear
You might enjoy my book about the other side of JA's novel P&P -
Darcy's Story by Janet Aylmer
My web site is - www.janetaylmer.com"
Janet wrote: "Mirta, Rachel and QNPoohBearYou might enjoy my book about the other side of JA's novel P&P -
Darcy's Story by Janet Aylmer
My web site is - www.janetaylmer.com"
I enjoyed Julia & the Master of Morancourt!
I'm Bella Breen. I've loved Pride and Prejudice since high school. I also write Pride and Prejudice variations. You can follow along as I write on my website at www.bellabreen.com
Anyone interested in reading books about life in the Georgian period might enjoy Jennifer Kloester's (factual) book - Georgette Heyer's Regency World
ISBN - 978-0099478720
Hi! My name's Rosalie. I'd never read any Jane Austen novels until I enrolled in a Jane Austen English class at my university, but I'm so glad I did. So far I've read Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. I loved Emma, but you can't beat the drama in Pride and Prejudice. I'd love to learn more about Jane Austen and maybe get some suggestions for what I should read next!
RosalieI was asked to review the biography of Jane Austen by the English author Claire Tomalin soon after it was published in 1997.
As I am not sure how to refer to my document here, I will copy the text across to this comment.
http ://facstaff.uww.eduhipchene/JAusten/brus...
Claire Tomalin. Jane Austen: a life. London: Viking, 1997 .
Reviewed by Jean Brushfield (pen name: novelist Janet Aylmer) at the request of ASJAS.
"Jane Austen and her novels have been the subject of so much media attention during the past few years that any reviewer could be forgiven for feeling weary at the prospect of reading more about the author. In this context, Claire Tomalin has achieved the almost impossible, producing a book which offers fresh insights into the background and motivations of this most famous of English novelists.
Tomalin already has several well-regarded biographies to her credit, including those of the poet Shelley, Nelly Ternan (mistress of Charles Dickens), and Mrs Jordan, mistress to the Prince Regent. The extent of her research for her latest book is handled lightly. Although the family and their connections have been well documented elsewhere, Claire Tomalin takes a fresh approach in suggesting that there were consequences of Jane's circumstances, both as a child and as a young woman, which may have had a critical influence on her work.
The practice in the Austen family was to "farm out" the children, after their first few months of life until they were a year or two old, to wet nurses in the local village. Tomalin makes the plausible suggestion that this early separation from her mother and her home may explain the Interruption in Jane's creative inspiration for several years when she was forcibly moved away from her familiar surroundings in Steventon when her father retired to live in Bath.
The library at the Rectory at Steventon was as available to Jane as it was to the young boys who were tutored by her father and lived with the family, since Tomalin reminds us of the strong links between Austen's novels and the works of Dr Johnson. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that Jane wrote all her books from a feminine viewpoint, in view of her close acquaintance from an early age, as Tomalin explains, with her father's pupils and her own brothers.
At a talk by Claire Tomalin about her book that I attended on 31 October 1997 at the Theatre Royal in Bath (England), she said how aware she had been that she was seeking to retell the life of an author who was an "icon" to so many people. Tomalin said that Jane Austen remained, despite the known details of her life, a person who had not revealed her innermost thoughts in her writings, nor based much of her plots on situations known to her. Rather, she had had the skill to invent stories which portrayed aspects of the time during which she lived in ways which we still appreciate today.
In the book, the details of family life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries are brought vividly to the reader, as Tomalin skilfully documents Jane's progress from the young woman who nearly lost her heart to the handsome Irishman, Tom Lefroy, to the final years when she at last gained some recognition as a successful author.
In a family where, like so many others at that time, women could not rely on surviving to see their children grow up, and were burdened with so many household duties whilst they lived, Tomalin suggests that Jane had good reason to view the married state with some scepticism. Certainly the early deaths of 4 of her sisters-in-law must have brought home to her the risks for women and particularly those which accompanied motherhood.
In a family where letters were constantly being despatched, news exchanged and visits made, Cassandra Austen's role in arranging the household so that Jane had time to write regularly has not always been so well recognised as in this book. Many of the Austen children followed their mother by trying their hand at writing, but his younger daughter's talents were clearly recognised by the Reverend Austen early in her life, when he sought to sell her first book to a publisher when she was barely out of her teens.
Tomalin highlights Jane's precocious talent in producing three very different books (Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility) by the time she was 23 - no "formula novelist" she! If there is any weakness in this biography, it is perhaps that the explanations of the plots of the novels might have been better put in appendices, rather than being introduced sometimes rather abruptly within the story of the author's life.
Jane Austen's family were relatively impoverished members of the middle class at a time when social position largely determined one's success in life. The stark contrast between the expectations of an able young man in the Austen family and one of his sisters (without any fortune to tempt an eligible suitor), is clearly set out in the book. In this sense, Jane's strength of mind in rejecting the proposal of the wonderfully named Harris Bigg-Wither was brave.
Whether someone as determined as Jane would have been prevented from writing by becoming Mrs Bigg-Wither, we can only speculate; but Claire Tomalin may well be right in assuming that we might not have the novels at all, or at least in the form that they were eventually published.
We may also share her view that, carried by their author on so many journeys to visit relatives and friends during Jane's middle years, it is close to a miracle that the manuscripts of the books survived at all. The thought of the effort needed to draft and redraft a book like Pride and Prejudice by hand is indeed daunting to the modern author, indulged by the conveniences of the wordprocessor and the photocopier.
In evoking the realities of Jane Austen's life, Tomalin offers the reader a fresh and welcome insight into what prompted, formed, and finally brought to fruition one of the greatest literary talents in the English language."
Welcome Rosalie! A Jane Austen English class sounds like fun. If you haven't already read Georgette Heyer, she's Jane Austen's literary successor in terms of the Regency era. If three or four families in a country village setting is your thing then try Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire Chronicles. If you get tired of her jingoism during the war years and post-war cynicism, switch to D.E. Stevenson. You must also read North and South since you love Pride and Prejudice.
Mod
Glad to have you here with us!
Hello Everyone!My name is Jennifer and I have been a Jane Austen Fan since I was 13 years old. I'll never forget when I picked up my first Jane Austen book. I was going to the UK to visit family and while at the airport in Toronto, of course we made a stop at the book shops. I picked up a copy of Pride and Prejudice and read it on the plane ride across the pond. I was hooked. I still own that copy and now several others as I collect different releases and covers of Pride and Prejudice. I have also read Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield Park.
I really enjoy Pride and Prejudice variations as well. Most recently I finished a novel called Heartstone by Elle Katharine White. It combined my two most favourite things, Pride and Prejudice and Dragons. I love Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels as well so to stumble across this book I almost squealed in excitement. I just finished that novel, and quite honestly, if I could jump into it and live there I would. Such a great story I highly recommend it to anyone who loves Pride and Prejudice. Bonus! It's also a trilogy!
Of course there is also Bridget Jones Diary which was a good book and the movie was pretty good too! My favourite though is the BBC made for TV six part series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. Aside from some dialogue at the end of the book which the director has said in post interviews he regrets not adding, for me it captures the essence of the book and its the best version.
Even though I have a pile of books to read, I always seem to go back and read Pride and Prejudice again. I have read it at least 35 times. Its almost like catching up with an old friend every time I open the cover to that first page.
It's lovely to find a reading group who loves Jane Austen as much as I do and I can't wait to catch up on your group topics.
Welcome fellow New Englander Evie! Persuasion is my favorite too. Check out Austen in Boston, a great book club that meets in real life a few times a year, if you want to discuss Jane Austen's works.
Mod
Happy to have you with us!
Hello, I am Beth (in the UK!). Austen is without doubt my all time favourite classical/literary author, and all her books are 'go to' books on my keeper shelf, re-read periodically - and every time I re-read them I learn more and more.It's one of the unfairnesses of the world (OK, a very trivial one!) that she didn't live to write more. Just imagine if she'd lived into her eighties!
I might wish she had, for her sake, as she was just starting to make money out of writing, and that would have liberated her and her sister Cassandra, (and their mother) from the genteel poverty in which they lived, dependent on their brothers to keep them.
That said, she'd have been in the 1840s in her sixties, and a Victorian author by then - I wonder what kind of works she'd have produced? Would she have explored industrialisation, like Mrs Gaskell, I wonder? What influence might she have had on women authors in the period, eg the Brontes as well, if she had been, by then a 'Grande Dame' of female literature?
Maybe, in a way, it's nicer that she is simply encapsulated as a 'Regency' author in that 'brief but graceful world' of the Regency period.
There isn't a literary genre known as Regency. Jane was between literary movements and pioneered the modern novel.I don't think Jane would have transitioned well into being a Romantic author (Brontes, Sir Walter Scott, etc.). Scholars say she was experimenting when she wrote Persuasion and Sanditon. I think she would have continued to write the kind of story she wanted to write whether it was fashionable or not and whether it was published or not. She was interested more in money than fame but content at Chawton Cottage. She didn't make much from her writing and spent quite a bit on gifts and fripperies. At her death, her total assets were valued at under £800. Jane's will left almost everything to Cassandra except for some money to pay back her brother Henry for working hard to get her novels published.
I found Sanditon a disappointment. It seems like a terrible falling away, as if someone with a terminal condition is desperate to mock concern with health
Mod
We're glad to have you here!
Rachel - thank you! :) (I'm v. pleased to be here!!)In terms of Austen becoming a Romantic author, I believe Charlotte Bronte disliked her enormously, as to her Austen was very dull and prosaic and small-minded.
But I have a dim memory that Walter Scott admired her, or what little he knew of her?
I agree she is NOT a 'romantic author' - we only have to see her disapproval of Marianne and Willoughby behaving badly.
I would take a strong punt that she would LOATHE Wuthering Heights!!!! Cathy and Heathcliffe do behave quiet disgracefully to just about everyone they encounter.
Persuasion is about as 'romantic' as she gets really.
Walter Scott was a huge fan of Jane Austen (and she of him) but yes, Charlotte Bronte thought there wasn't enough passion or windswept moors. Jane Austen was too neat and gentle. Um OK... I didn't get passion from Jane Eyre either. That book made me roll my eyes and I threw it out halfway through. I had to fish it out of the trash to finish it for school. Wuthering Heights appealed to me as a teen but not now and it disturbs me that Twilight is a modern-day cheesed up adaptation and that 50 Shades of Grey is based on Twilight. Pass the smelling salts to the ghost of Emily Bronte please!
Having read Scott, I'd say he is definitely romantic in terms of the historical setting and the backdrop of wild scenery.But in terms of romantic relationships, his juvenile leads act with total contemporary propriety, very far from romantic in the current sense.
I've always felt when it comes to the Brontes one is either a Charlotte fan or an Emily fan! Charlotte defers to the social norms (no, it's NOT all right to have a bigamous marriage to Mr Rochester, and he must pay the price for having attempted it, by being disfigured and blinded in a fire), whereas of course Emily doesn't give a stuff!
It's interesting, if a bit chilling, as you say, to see Heathcliffe morphed into a vampire (is that the Twilight thing?), let alone a guy that gets off on beating up women.....
(But then, we do see him behaving quite unspeakably to his wife - Isabella? - who, unlike Emily, had to 'live with the fantasy' of a wild, untameable male....and realised how truly nasty it turned out to be.)
However, for all my criticism and dislike of WH, it does convey, with tearing and unbearable intensity, the horror and nightmare of bereavement. How the very, very worst thing that can happen to human beings is to lose someone we love. For that it is timeless, and agonising to read, and always will be, while humans are mortal.
PS - And yes, I'd vote for Emily's 'not giving a stuff' for social conventions eg, when it comes to bigamy - just not when it comes to treating other people, ie, Cathy and Heathcliffe's hapless spouses!, callously and cruelly.
Hi! My name is Annika and I'm from the Netherlands. I've only read Emma and Mansfield Park so far. But I am collecting the books in Dutch now (I own a boxset of her books in English). My mother loved Jane Austen and she infected me with her love for her books. Looking forward to reading al her other books. :)
Mod
You have some great books ahead of you! Happy to have you here with us.
Hi, my name is Brenda, I’ve been on Goodreads (actively) since the beginning of this year. I just found this group and am excited as I love Jane Austen. It’s been a few years since I’ve read her books so this year I am trying to make a go of it. I’ve read Northanger Abbey and Sanditon so far. I think her two shortest?? Haha. I will read just about anything if it’s interesting and well written.
Mod
Good luck with the Jane read-a-thon! Happy to have you with us!
Have to say I think Northanger Abbey my least favourite, but then I think I've only ever read it once, and that years ago, so I should give it another go - I might be pleasantly surprised!!! Tell us what you think of it.....!
Northanger Abbey is slighter than the later novels, but has always been a favourite of mine. It was the first one I really appreciated with its debunking of popular romanticism. Oddly perhaps I always identified with Catherine even as a teenage young man.
Yes, I think it's because it's so much slighter, as you rightly say, that I don't like it as much as her 'mature' novels. I also think the subject of debunking popular romanticism isn't really relevant any more, as I don't think modern readers are influenced by romantic tropes any longer, are we? If anything we have become anti-romantic.So to me I feel her thesis is an Aunt Sally that has long been demolished (for better or worse!)
I think Austen handles the theme of 'over-impressionable young love and how disastrous it cane be' far more thoroughly in Sense and Sensibility. Ironically, when I first read the book (or, at least, started it!) I was a school girl teenager, and I thought Willoughby's sweeping of Marianne off her feet 'dead romantic'!!!! (These days I can't abide Marianne - infuriating and self-obsessed!) (But of course, I'm no longer a school girl teenager swooning away like crazy!)
I do think NA points the way forward for Austen in the critical element to all 'female' novels in that the young heroine is bereft of parental guidance, as all Austen's heroines are (and, indeed, have to be, other wise they would not have to make their own critical choices!) (interestingly, this absence of parent guidance, guardianship and protection remains very much in evidence in modern romance novels, where the heroines are 'bereft' and have to make their own potentially dangerous decisions about who to fall for!)In NA, Katherine does have 'both alive and sensible parents', unlike all her other heroines who don't (either or both), but they are simply not on the scene so she is essentially 'alone' in Bath and at NA itself, and therefore has no parental guidance available to her.
While NA isn't my favorite, I think it's the easiest to update or understand for modern teens. Remember the Twilight vampire craze of 10 years ago? Replace "horrid" novels with vampires and fast carriages with fast cars. Northanger Abbey updates the story well enough. The plot is slow and the thing that gets Catherine sent home is weird.
Yes, good point about the updating possibilities! Has anyone done it yet do you think?
Beth-In-UK wrote: "Yes, good point about the updating possibilities! Has anyone done it yet do you think?"Yes.
for the Jane Austen Project and I have read a couple of modern riffs on the story. I especially liked a Ghost Hunters spoof story in Jane Austen Made Me Do It: Original Stories Inspired by Literature's Most Astute Observer of the Human Heart.
Can't say I'm surprised! :) :) Thinking about it, it's such a tribute to Austen, that so many should do 'takes' on her.
Can't imagine any one in their right mind, for example, bothering to do the same for, say, George Eliot. Her originals are quite enough thank you....(for those who can get through them....)
(Sorry, that's a bit mean, but no one reads her for pleasure, surely??)
Hi! I'm Ashley.I'm 17 and have been a bookworm ever since I can remember.
Jane Austen has been my inspiration in many of my writings (I want to become an author), and I've read all of her big works (Still working on the Watsons and Lady Susan). I'm such a big fan of hers! And to prove it, I went to the extent of buying a tee-shirt that says "Run like Mr. Collins just proposed". Yup, I'm kinda obsessed and have been for over 5 years.
I cry when I watch the BBC Emma over and over again, and I love the BBC Pride and Prejudice series....it just warms my heart and gives me life! XD
I also wrote an essay about how JA books are for boys too. It was very detailed.
I collect all kinds of publications of Jane Austen's works, and I have collected quite a pile! I love the hardcover editions with lots of detail.
Jane Austen memes are also my vibe!
I can't wait to discuss more JA with you all. So glad to find people who love JA like I do.
Good for you writing an essay on Jane Austen books are for boys. As you get older, you'll find more men enjoy the novels. Teen boys tend to be silly and stupid and reject anything they think isn't relevant to them. They could learn a lot from the novels though! It's so nice to see a young person interested in Jane Austen. I didn't read the books until I was in my late teens/early 20s.
Thank you! :) That's really nice of you.Thanks for the tip! I totally agree.
And I love your username😂
Mod
That t-shirt and your essay sound great! LOL!
Glad to have you here!
Rachel wrote: "WELCOME, Ashley!That t-shirt and your essay sound great! LOL!
Glad to have you here!"
Thank you! So kind :)
Beth-In-UK wrote: "Can't say I'm surprised! :) :) Can't imagine any one in their right mind, for example, bothering to do that for George Eliot..."
George Eliot is the only novelist I can think of where I have wept at all her full length novels, except for Romola. I find her rather worthy now, but she is undoubtedly the Great British Woman Novelist. (Jane Austen is much funnier. It's the Bronte girls I can't be doing with.)
I'm unfairly horrid about poor GE, I know. I feel huge sympathy for her as a person - being a plain, clever woman was no walk in the park (still isn't.....'unbeauty' is perhaps the cruellest discriminator of all in society)(for men, too, as well, though perhaps not as much historically).I sort of feel GE always 'tries too hard' to write consciously great novels, or at least, literary ones. I think Austen wrote, to be blunt, for money mostly (for fun when young yes, but then she realised that she could, and indeed, probably must, try to make some money of her own, and that writing commercially successful novels was her best bet)(she didn't compromise on quality of course!!). The Brontes wrote out of passion and their strange, isolated, fantastical existence on the very fringes of society. But GE wrote, I feel, to be a literary author.....
As I say, I may be being very unfair, and also, the only one I've ploughed through is Middlemarch (I think I read Daniel Deronda when they did a TV version decades ago - it's a very 'odd' book to read - sort of, perhaps, like a white person nowadays writing very deliberately about a BAME hero??? All in a good cause, of course....).
To my mind, Middlemarch is just too 'big' in its scope.
I also don't like that it was not set contemporaneously, but is a 'historical' novel for when it was published (OK, recent history, but still 'in the past' for its publication date)
(It was on BBC Radio 4 recently, serialised, and I think I caught the final bit of the last episode, which reminded me a bit of the whole thing.)
(One thing I do like about MM is how GE just LOATHES Rosalind! It's the hatred of a plain clever woman for a beautiful stupid one. Shades of Charlotte Bronte going to town on the ghastly Blanche Ingram! Hoorah!)
I admit I find GE turgid now, but Silas Marner I found very very moving and mean to read again soon. Rosalind Vincy is brilliant - absolutely poisonous but nobody would guess. Many Victorian novels were set in the time just before Victoria, Vanity Fair and all of Dickens. Trollope writes of the contemporary world though with railways. On Dickens everyone gets about by stagecoach
Ashley, great that you wrote that essay on Austen for boys! What argument did you make that they should read them?I think they are a bit of a challenge for teenage boys overall. Bit low on action and overheavy on trying to snap up a husband etc.
I think Persuasion might be the best one to start them off on, because of the sailor hero, and the references to the wars etc etc. But on the other hand it's probably frustrating that the war is over, or, at any rate, doesn't play an active part in the storyline.
I think it can be quite hard for teenagers of either sex to read books by authors of the opposite sex?? I'm still not sure I can ever believe truly in a female character created by a male author....(try reading D H Lawrence, for example - I've never seen the slightest resemblance to any woman in any of his female characters!)
Austen is a 'slow read' and it takes a while to enjoy the subtleties, humour and ironies of the language. I do see how teenage boys can just find them bo-ring.
This gay man could never get on with D H Lawrence.And basically I see your point about George Eliot - the great British novel is Bleak House, but that is so grotesque and melodramatic we have to say Middlemarch to sound tasteful.
George Eliot, intellectual atheist though she was, has a greater insight into religious experience than any other C19. And she used to make my cry. Mrs Bulstrode, gulp...
@Beth-In-UKIn my essay, this was my thesis:
"Teenage boys would benefit from reading Jane Austen because she was an excellent observer of human character, and the male characters in her books are great examples of both what to be and what not to be as a man."
And then after that, I brought some of her characters to the stand: (Two bad ones) Willoughby and Wickham, and (then a good one) Mr. Knightly.
For instance, Jane Austen wrote about Wickham to warn her readers not to be selfish and economically foolish. Wickham only thought of himself, and he never thought about the all of the people he was hurting because of his foolishness. He was so absorbed in himself; he never thought of others.
Also in my essay, I mentioned that it has been a common thing for the guys to avoid JA at all costs due to the lady's obsessions over gowns and balls and falling in love...
But all that to say, if you stick it out till the end and brave JA, then you will learn many things and come out the wiser for it. You will become a better person and make better choices because you have read the right books.
Because by reading the right books, you will see how the character's actions brought on a certain end. In the right books, you will find that a good action is followed by a good end, and a bad by a bad one. And by watching how it played out for them, you can avoid the bad ones at all costs and aim for the good ones.
You may be thinking to yourself at this point, "Not in every story has someone's actions follow out like that. Plenty of villains have done horrible deeds and then won a battle. Truth doesn't always win." But although it may seem that they got what they wanted in the end, you will find that they are not happy but miserable. Truth always wins in the end. "In the end" is key. Truth doesn't always win every battle, but it will win the war.
I just wanted to take care of that possible refutation. :)
But that is why JA is important to both male and female readers.
And I don't know if this is true for both genders, but I have never had a problem reading a book by a male author. But a male might for fear that they have to read raptures about the character's next ball.
Just a thought!
Jane Austen
Books mentioned in this topic
The Lord of the Rings (other topics)Emma (other topics)
Georgette Heyer's Regency World (other topics)
Pride and Prejudice (other topics)
Sense and Sensibility (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Angela Thirkell (other topics)D.E. Stevenson (other topics)
Georgette Heyer (other topics)
Katherine Reay (other topics)
Marian Devon (other topics)
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