I am a cyclical reader; I tend to read authors and genres at the same time in the year. And I read Jane Austen in the summer. Northanger Abbey is a guaranteed re-read, but I usually pick another Austen to re-read in the summer, too. So, in the spring, I try to read a non-fiction book about Jane Austen. I’ve had this audiobook saved in my Kobo library for quite some time and decided to indulge myself. For this week’s Book Bite we have The Real Jane Austen by Paula Byrne.
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, Paula Byrne
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things offers a startlingly original look at the revered writer through a variety of key moments, scenes, and objects in her life and work. Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen’s daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Byrne’s portrait-organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources-explores the lives of Austen’s extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Through their absorbing stories we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character. Byrne transports us to different worlds-the East Indies and revolutionary Paris-and different events-from a high society scandal to a petty case of shoplifting, She follows Austen on her extensive travels, setting her in contexts both global and English, urban and rural, political and historical, social and domestic-wider perspectives of vital and still under-estimated importance to her creative life.
Literary scholarship has revealed that letters and tokens in Austen’s novels often signal key turning points in the unfolding narrative. This groundbreaking biography explores Jane’s own story following the same principle. As Byrne reveals, small things in the writer’s world-a scrap of paper, a simple gold chain, an ivory miniature, a bathing machine-hold significance in her emotional and artistic development. The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman deeply immersed in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in her independence and ambition; to an author who was an astute commentator on human nature and the foibles of her own age. Rich and compelling, it is a fresh, insightful, and often surprising portrait of an artist and a vivid evocation of the complex world that shaped her.
Why You Should Read This…
If the name Paula Byrne sounds familiar to you, I would hazard a guess that you are a Sanditon fan. Byrne is an academic and historical consultant and worked on Sanditon, and has shared a lot of behind-the-scenes and production info on Twitter. (Do give her a follow if you love Austen!)
This is one of my favourite Austen biographies. This approaches Austen through very specific objects in her life, which sounds as though it would be a hyper-specific biography. However, it allows Byrne to give a much wider context to Austen’s life. She delves into Austen’s friends and family, those in her community, and the wider Regency world. We often think of the past being very geographically limited but Austen’s world was so much more than the houses, ballrooms, and cottages that we have records of. This biography presents a full and fascinating biography of the Austen that we all love.
I have seen many criticisms from Austen fanatics that disagree with various points that Byrne makes throughout the book. However, like any biography or history book, there will always be points that you agree with and those that you do not. I think that the strength of this book lies in its ability to build Austen’s world so fully and that she engages with so many sources to do so!
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Is The Real Jane Austen on your to-read list?
Cheers,
The Historian
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