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Jane Austen
Unavailable
Jane Austen
Unavailable
Jane Austen
Audiobook5 hours

Jane Austen

Written by Carol Shields

Narrated by Donada Peters

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Shields here explores the life of a writer whose own novels have delighted readers for the past 200 years. In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb novelist from her early family life in Steventon to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Carol Shields's magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.

"This tightly written biography brings Austen to life in a way rarely seen. Here she is the living, breathing woman not the prim literary classic. Outstanding job."-Booklist
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 29, 2001
ISBN9781415911013
Unavailable
Jane Austen
Author

Carol Shields

Carol Shields’s novels include Unless; Larry’s Party, winner of The Women’s Prize; The Stone Diaries, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Republic of Love; Happenstance; and Mary Swann. Dressing Up for the Carnivaland Various Miracles, collections of short stories, were later published as The Collected Stories. Brought up in Chicago, Shields lived in Canada from 1957 until her death in 2003.

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Reviews for Jane Austen

Rating: 3.6153846153846154 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

26 ratings1 review

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I would tell a reader with an intensive interest in Jane Austen not to miss this. Nokes takes a contrarian view of some of the major incidents of JA's life, but his arguments are well supported and anyone with a serious interest in JA should at least ponder them. I wouldn't recommend this as a first-or-only biography of Jane Austen. If the reader is interested in a book of this length, I urge them to try John Halperin. Nokes does a masterful, almost unparalleled job of weaving together quotes from the papers of the Austens and various associates. He assures us that he never puts any words into anyone's mouth. He does, however, freely put thoughts into their heads, some of which are reasonable and some which have no known support. He also draws little verbal pictures to go along with these, reasonable, perhaps, but more suitable for fiction. Nokes also chooses to begin and end his biography with two imaginative "short stories." Interwoven into Chapter One, "Family Secrets" is a surprisingly long account of the Hancock family, Jane's aunt Philadelphia Austen and her husband Tysoe Saul Hancock, separated from his wife and daughter as he tries to rebuild his fortune in India. He ends with an almost entirely imagined account of Francis Cullum, paid caretaker of Thomas Leigh and George Austen. Since we know very little about Cullum or the health problems of Leigh and Austen, I find this highly judgemental piece absurd, especially in a work that purports to be nonfiction. I like that the book has the running title of the chapter on the left-hand page and the dates on the right. The Notes fortunately contain the chapter running title as well as the chapter number, so it is relatively easy to match up notes. The sources, except for manuscripts, are unfortunately scattered throughout the notes - it would be nice if at least major sources were gathered into a bibliography.