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Review by Roger Bishop
Jane Austen died in July 1817, at the age of 41. Only four of her novels, "Pride and Prejudice," "Sense and Sensibility," "Mansfield Park" and "Emma," were published during her lifetime. She had known critical acclaim and enjoyed some commercial success, with "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility," but her reputation as a writer advanced slowly, and she was not a leading literary figure.
Her entire life was lived with her family. Initially this meant with her village rector father, her mother and seven siblings. She did not marry, and, at the time of her death, she shared a house with her mother and her sister, Cassandra, the person who was closest to her. Claire Tomalin, author of the exhaustively researched and compelling "Jane Austen: A Life" points out: "The world of her imagination was separate and distinct from the world she inhabited," but "she did depend on particular working conditions which allowed her to abstract herself from the daily life going on around her." The writing was hers, but her family was, in large part, responsible for the conditions. Generally, this worked to her benefit. Her parents encouraged her from an early age; the family would gather to read Jane's work in the evening; there was help from a brother in securing a publisher, among other things. But it also meant that she was subject to decisions of others and to twists and turns in the lives of others that affected her well-being. An outstanding negative example of this came when Jane was 25 and her parents decided that they would leave the village of Steventon in Hampshire and move the family to the resort town of Bath. This move was so upsetting to Jane it kept her from doing significant work again until she was 34.
Appropriately, and wisely, Tomalin has given us a family history which helps us to understand important family circle influences on Austen's major achievements, and how she was able to accomplish what she did at a time when literary works by women were rarely published.
Perhaps "the oddest presence" in Jane's life was her cousin Eliza who had lived in India and France, and whose charm and wit strongly influenced the young writer. Reading books in her father's sizable library was also a "primary influence." "Mr. Austen cannot have kept much from her." Another influence was a boys' school that her parents ran for a number of years at their home. "Growing up in a school meant that Jane knew exactly what to expect of boys, and was always at ease with them; boys were her natural environment, and boys' jokes and boys' interests were the first she learnt about."
Tomalin writes that "Jane Austen managed the day-to-day routines of a novelist with an efficiency and discipline worthy of her naval [officer] brothers." According to an account written by a nephew, "She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by servants, or visitors, or any person beyond her own family party. She wrote upon small pieces of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper."
It has been written that Austen's was an uneventful life. To the contrary, this biography demonstrates that her life was not only eventful but her career quite remarkable for her time.
Tomalin, biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft and Katherine Mansfield among others, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Austen family that enables her to transport readers back to another time and place. Her perceptive comments and engaging style inspire us to reread Austen's works themselves, or to read them for the first time.
Roger Bishop is contributing editor to this publication.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.