I found this book at a Church yard sale and of course, I had to buy it. It’s only 1 euro and you can never know too much about Jane Austen!

This biography of Jane Austen is a rather slim volume that tells her story by focusing on her relationships and how that might have impacted her writing. This means that the book moves between talking about Jane Austen’s novels and about Jane Austen’s life. It makes the chronological order of things feel a bit choppy, but it was an interesting way of looking at things.

Given that Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen’s sister, destroyed a lot of Jane Austen’s letters that she didn’t think were flattering, there’s bound to be a lot of conjecture here. While some of the letters are quoted, most are not and we left viewing them the way the author viewed them. For example:

“Jane Austen’s tone in her letters to Cassandra is merry and expectant and feverishly false. There is too much heartiness and there are too many intervening letters after the first announcement that appear to have been destroyed by Cassandra.”

The letters in question aren’t quoted, so the reader has to believe the author when she tells us that the tone is “feverishly false.” I was also not sure of how far we can trust the tone of the letters as an accurate judge of Jane Austen’s mind because Shields also says in the start of the book that Jane Austen utilised a letter-writing technique that was “being encouraged in her time, and so the scattered and somewhat breathless nature of her correspondence is the result not of carelessness but of deliberation.” If the letters were deliberately written in a style, was the tone also deliberate and could it be hiding something?

Despite not knowing how much of the interpretation of Jane Austen’s letters can be trusted, I had a fun time reading this book. It’s always interesting to make connections between Jane Austen’s novels and her life, and this book was short enough to finish in a day, making it a quick, fun read for me.

P.s. if you enjoy reading about Jane Austen, here’s a list of my favourite books about her!