Jane Austen at Home: A Biography

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The cramped rented flat in the upper part of this house was the sisters’ home for the last weeks of Jane’s life, chosen because it was near the hospital in Winchester.

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley | Goodreads

Me ha encantado conocer más en profundidad a Jane, no sólo en su faceta de escritora sino también en su día a día, como eran las relaciones con su familia, con sus amigos, conocer las dificultades y los obstáculos que tuvo que salvar para conseguir lo que más ansiaba. This book is a superb telling of 18th century society and life - Jane's life - through her homes and it is ably done with passion and care that brings our subject and her family in to being. We read of early life at home in Hampshire and how the family lived together but with financial challenges that saw her mother and (especially) father try their best for the children.

I thought the whole book was fascinating, and the author's examples from Jane's work made me want to reread all her novels. (Although this is not a new phenomenon; on any given day, whatever I'm doing, I'd likely rather be reading a Jane Austen novel. Or watching one of the movies.) There were lots of surelys and no wonders, and a lot of rhetorical questions, which yeah, didn't really work. If anything they reminded of her presence. You really understand the 'genteel' poverty the Austen women suffered from after her father's death. And will marvel at how some relatives of means could have easily elevated them but didn't. Ms. Worsley even points out how miserly their existence at the cottage compared to the luxury of the Knight family enjoyed only a few yards away. The story of the Austens at Steventon Rectory really begins in the late summer of 1768, when a wagon heavily loaded with household goods made its way through the Hampshire lanes from nearby Deane to the village of Steventon. Its members had no notion that so many historians and biographers would scrutinise this ordinary event in the life of an ordinary family.

Jane Austen At Home - Jane Austen Centre Bath Jane Austen At Home - Jane Austen Centre Bath

She also had a very well developed sense of the ridiculous and a sense of humour which could see something amusing in most situations. She also enjoyed misleading people and her letters and the novels can be read on many levels and it is very far from clear whether she is joking or being serious.Last, we learn of the life events which shaped Austen. All of these details are stitched together beautifully throughout this biography and we are given examples of how Austen's life and thoughts about the society in which she lived, the people she knew, and all other aspects of her life were fodder for her beloved novels. We are given many examples of how all of these were worked into the novels, but also how and why she had to be very careful about what she included. Fascinating! This was my favorite part of the biography. Austen wrote about what she knew and even advised a beloved niece aspiring to write a novel to do just that.

Jane Austen at Home, by Lucy Worsley Book review: Jane Austen at Home, by Lucy Worsley

Worsley examines the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons. She shows readers a passionate Jane Austen who fought for her freedom, a woman who had at least five marriage prospects, but--in the end--a woman who refused to settle for anything less than Mr. Darcy.Worse still is that Worsley bases many of her arguments regarding Austen's personality and actions on the author's own novels. While I'm sure that when writing her novels Austen will have drawn inspiration from some of her own experiences, to solely link her life to those of her fictional characters makes for a rather skewed account of the author herself. These comparisons were thin at best, and most of the time plainly misleading. This new telling of the story of Jane’s life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the places and spaces that mattered to her. It wasn’t all country houses and ballrooms, but a life that was often a painful struggle. Jane famously lived a ‘life without incident’, but with new research and insights Lucy Worsley reveals a passionate woman who fought for her freedom. A woman who far from being a lonely spinster in fact had at least five marriage prospects, but who in the end refused to settle for anything less than Mr Darcy. mystrangereading Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley ⭐️⭐️⭐️ A very interesting look at Jane Austen and her family's life. It was clearly very well researched, and I appreciate how as it followed her life it paralleled the books she wrote. Biographies are difficult for me to get through, but I found this one to be engaging enough to keep me curious and reading!