The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things

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Pub Date 17 Jan 2013 | Archive Date 4 Jul 2013
HarperCollins | HarperPress

Description

Who was the real Jane Austen? Overturning the traditional portrait of the author as conventional and genteel, bestseller Paula Byrne’s landmark biography reveals the real woman behind the books.
In this new biography, best-selling author Paula Byrne (bestselling author of Perdita, Mad World) explores the forces that shaped the interior life of Britain’s most beloved novelist: her father’s religious faith, her mother’s aristocratic pedigree, her eldest brother’s adoption, her other brothers’ naval and military experiences, her relatives in the East and West Indies, her cousin who lived through the trauma of the French Revolution, the family’s amateur theatricals, the female novelists she admired, her residence in Bath, her love of the seaside, her travels around England and her long struggle to become a published author.
Byrne uses a highly innovative technique whereby each chapter begins from an object that conjures up a key moment or theme in Austen’s life and work—a silhouette, a vellum notebook, a topaz cross, a laptop writing box, a royalty cheque, a bathing machine, and many more.
The woman who emerges in this biography is far tougher, more socially and politically aware, and altogether more modern than the conventional picture of ‘dear Aunt Jane’ would allow. Published to coincide with the bicentenary of Pride and Prejudice, this lively and scholarly biography brings Austen dazzlingly into the twenty-first century.

Who was the real Jane Austen? Overturning the traditional portrait of the author as conventional and genteel, bestseller Paula Byrne’s landmark biography reveals the real woman behind the books.
In...


Advance Praise

From the reviews of Perdita:
‘A fine biographer has conjured up a dazzling personality and brought her, laughing, back to life’ Sunday Times
‘Imagine Nicole Kidman, Monica Lewinsky, Susan Sontag and Madonna all rolled into one, then ask yourself, how is it that we’ve never heard of her? Utterly absorbing’ Vogue
From Mad World reviews:
‘Vibrant, absorbing, stranger than fiction’ Sunday Times
‘Byrne has written a marvellous book, warm, witty and enormously readable‘ Daily Telegraph

From the reviews of Perdita:
‘A fine biographer has conjured up a dazzling personality and brought her, laughing, back to life’ Sunday Times
‘Imagine Nicole Kidman, Monica Lewinsky, Susan Sontag and...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9780007358335
PRICE US$0.00 (USD)

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