E-grāmata: Life of the Author: Jane Austen

"This biography revitalises Jane Austen's life by focusing on the evidence and narrative possibilities of her letters. The book creates three frames for her literary life and output by following parallel paths through her correspondence. In three pairs of chapters the letters are viewed thematically through the prisms of personal and family life writing, Austen's circle of correspondents, and significant places in her life and novels. The final chapter explores other areas of speculative interest in Austen by rereading documentary scraps from the letters' standpoint. Discussion of the works includes the letters themselves as well as the juvenile writings and unpublished novels. There is particular emphasis on Austen's female circle and the ways in which her life evidence has been treated leading up to the bicentenary of her death. The aim has been to open up literary-biographical interpretation by suggesting ways of re-addressing an apparently inexhaustible biographical subject"--

A fresh approach to building the life of Jane Austen through her letters, demonstrating that a well-known life can be reframed by being grounded in evidence of that life

The Life of the Author: Jane Austen takes readers on a literary-biographical journey through Austen's life in letters. Using a unique non-linear approach, author Catherine Delafield explores three frames for Austen's literary life—family, correspondents, and fiction—to suggest new pathways for the interpretation of life writing about one of the most popular and influential English novelists of all time. Delafield addresses multiple aspects of Austen's epistolary practice and the ways in which her letters, juvenile writings, and unpublished novels have been overlaid on both biography and fiction.

Throughout the text, special attention is paid to the changing view of women’s correspondence as personal record and to Cassandra Austen's role as editor of her sister’s surviving letters. The book opens with selected readings from Austen's letters and a review of the family treatment of the life. Subsequent chapters discuss the female circle of correspondents in both extant and missing letters, the letter content and structure of Austen's novels, the use of letters as representations of places and spaces based on Austen's own lived experience of epistolary communication, and more.

• Discusses how the letters, correspondents, and novels supplement Jane Austen’s fiction and substantiate her life
• Highlights Austen's use of the letter as a conversation on paper, rather than as an autobiographical tool
• Explores the letters within Austen's fictional writing as well as recipes, accounts, and needlework with links to the letters
• Features a select chronology using letters as landmarks, tables representing surviving letters by correspondent, and family trees tracing names and relationships

The Life of the Author: Jane Austen is an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate courses on the novel, women's writing, British writing, and life writing, as well as for general readers with interest in gaining new perspectives on Austen's chronological life and literary output.