Only A Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen

I was lucky enough to be approved for two different non-fiction Jane Austen books from NetgGalley in the last month. It is particularly fortuitous timing (as Jane might say), as I visited several different Austen sites in Bath (including the Assembly Rooms!). While it is quite fun to get lost in Austen’s novels, I also love to delve into the history of the Regency period, as well as Jane’s own history. I am still making my way through the second book, but I am excited to share Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen with you today!

Jane Austen can be a lot to handle. Although it’s not like you are reading a Dickens or Hugo novel that could easily serve as a doorstop, they have their own tone, weight, and language to figure out. Countless women will espouse a love of Fitzwilliam Darcy (and/or Colin Firth), but there is so much more to her novels than Darcy. Austen led a fascinating life and sadly, it often gets left behind for Pemberley. However, Only a Novel puts the focus back on Jane and uses her novels to do so!

Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen, Jane Aiken Hodge- 24 March 2019

From Goodreads:

In her lifetime, Jane Austen did her best to conform to the conventions of her day, and after her death the family touched up the picture. 

But the real Jane Austen, who started as author at twelve years old, was something very different. 

What depths of intellectual and moral despair must she have plumbed before she achieved the extraordinary moral vision that has been compared, with justice, to Chaucer’s? 

It was a fortunate thing for her family that the highly polished surface of the six novels, their sheer artistry concealing tension, makes it easy to miss the depth and bitterness of what they are often saying. 

We must look for real evidence about her character not in the censored reminiscences of Victorian relatives, but in the books and the letters themselves. 

Jane Aiken Hodge has gone deeply into the novelist’s own writings, family and contemporary records to produce a new picture of this enigmatic figure who did so much to revive the English novel at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 

Jane Austen appears at once as a very warm and human figure (the “dear Aunt Jane” of the Victorians), and as a baffling one. 

Did she, in fact, suffer what we should call a nervous breakdown in her silent, middle years? 

And was she content with her publishers, and with the comparatively modest earnings of her novels? 

Hodge does not pretend to provide final answers to these and other fascinating questions, but she is meticulous in giving the facts on which readers can base their own conclusions. 

This is a book for those who have always loved Jane Austen, and for those who would like to know more about her.

The title of this book really intrigued me. Was Jane Austen a spy and none of us knew about it?? (No, no she wasn’t.) However, I think that looking at Jane as a person and Jane in her novels is a great lens to look at her canon. I find that a lot of Austen scholars will often focus on one book, or a theme (usually romance). However, Only a Novel starts at the beginning and looks at everything, all novels and correspondence together, in a chronological order. Because Austen wrote drafts, put them aside, came back to them, and then published at later points, it is a delightful mish-mash. I love that it shows how interconnected her novels are, and that they weren’t stand-alone episodes.

I do need to caution that this book is really for the dedicated Austenite. If you don’t know Jane’s novels relatively well, you may find yourself a bit puzzled. Place names and characters are brought up without introduction, so having a basic knowledge of the novel plots and players will be a great help. Also, having a knowledge of Jane herself will let you grapple with Hodge’s conclusions about her character. I don’t necessarily agree with all of her conclusions but I loved that they made me think on my own ideas and reconsider Jane. At this point in time with 200 years passing since publishing, I think that a book that makes you reconsider Jane and examine her from a new angle is invaluable. Also, given that it examines all aspects of her life, it is a must-read no matter what your thoughts on Jane herself are. Austenites, this is certainly the book for you!

If you are newer to Austen, I shared 3 Books for the Modern Jane Austen Reader, all of which are perfect for the Austen neophyte.

Will you be reading Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen?

Cheers,
The Historian
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