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Average Customer Rating:

A good read

Customer Rating:

Noticing that one review was very caustic of this book, I would like to say that I thought it was very well written - especially considering that there is very little documentation to go on. I found the author's explanation of child-rearing, at that time, very interesting. I did not feel that she was trying to put it into perspective to "today's standards", as one reviewer wrote. What was really fascinating, to me, was the difference in what her family lifestyle was like - compared to what her books portrayed. I realize books and plots are just that - but the lives and atmosphere was definitely not as "dark" as a lot of her own was. Just fascinating. I think she would have been an interesting person to have met because I came away with the impression that she wasn't really the "private" person her brothers and other family made her out to be. Sounds like she had quite a wit - biting at that. Anyway, thanks to the author for writing this and doing a great job with little documentation.

Definite Choice	Customer Rating:
A book with a panaroma view and lots of details about not only Jane herself, but also her direct family (sometimes even including her neighbours and her parents' cousins). Found it extremely useful in learning about Jane's experience as a woman living in the Georgian England. A page-turner indeed! Strongly recommend it!

A Dramatic Life of Jane Austen...

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1997's "Jane Austen: A Life" is Claire Tomalin's highly readable, even dramatic account of the life of the popular romance novelist. Jane Austen left little for her future biographers beyond her published novels and some surviving letters and manuscripts. Tomalin addresses Jane in the context of her large and interesting family and their Hampshire friends and relatives. The result doesn't necessarily add a great deal to our limited store of knowledge about Jane Austen; it does provide some interesting insights into her context, and should bury forever any concerns about the source of Austen's acute understanding of human nature or the material for her novels. The good news about "Jane Austen: A Life" is that Claire Tomalin is a gifted writer and her book will be a page-turner for many fans. Tomalin has done her extensive research. In addition, Tomalin is not shy about speculating when it comes to the signficant gaps in our knowledge of Austen's life. Her speculation is generally reasonable and plausible, and almost always fascinating to read. It is less clear how much of the book is reasonable inference from the limited record and how much edges toward historical fiction. Tomalin includes her own literary criticism on Jane Austen's various works. This criticism is frankly hit or miss. Her comments on "Lady Susan" highlight its unusual leading character. Her analysis of the novel fragment "The Watson" explains why Jane Austen never finished it. However, she unfairly slights one of the main characters in "Sense and Sensibility", misreads the fate of Mr. Wickham and Lydia in "Pride and Prejudice", and perhaps misses the point of "Mansfield Park." Readers familiar with Jane Austen's novels can draw their own conclusions. Jane Austen is as vivid as Claire Tomalin can make her in this biography, a clever, acutely observant woman who must on occasion have been a little intimidating in person. She is very much a family person, at the beck and call of brothers, cousins, nieces and nephews all her life. We come to appreciation for how difficult Austen's life was after her father died. Her failure to marry lfet her, her spinster sister Cassandra, and her widowed mother in genteel poverty, dependent on support from her brothers and with few choices about where and how they would live. Unfortunately, Jane's writing did not begin to produce real income before her early death in 1817. "Jane Austen: A Life" is highly recommended as an interesting, even dramatic biography. The book includes an excellent selection of portraits of Jane Austen's family members. It is perhaps ironic that the one verified portrait of Jane Austen in life was said by her family to be inadequate, just as the person behind the novels continues to be elusive to biographers and fans alike.

Not a Boring Bio	Customer Rating:
Claire Tomalin in Jane Austen: A Life really delivers a wonderful story, not just a boring listing of events from the author's life. I've used this book for research before, and finally decided to buy it for my own collection and read it just for fun. I recommend this to anyone that has been curious about the author's life or any serious Janite.

Sweet Jane

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Claire Tomalin is one of the foremost biographers in the world today, in an exclusive group that includes Peter Ackroyd, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and a few others. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed her recent books on Samuel Pepys and Thomas Hardy, I purchased this book to look at one of Tomalin's older works. I also knew next to nothing about Jane Austen. I was not disappointed on either count. The book is outstanding, and I am currently in love with Jane Austen. Jane Austen was a brilliant, witty, unsentimental woman who led a remarkably unremarkable life. One expects great writers to live dramatic lives, but this just isn't true in Austen's case. She had written her first three novels by age 24, but wouldn't publish them or write another for ten years. She would never get rich off of her writings. Though she certainly drew on characters and scenes in her own life, much of Miss Austen's novels come from her vivid imagination. For instance, Jane Austen didn't socialize with the rich upper crust, but many of her books are about them. It seems Jane was a bit of a tomboy as a youth, and her high intelligence and biting wit often intimidated potential suitors. She was apparently in love only once, and this didn't work out. So she became, like her sister Cassandra with whom she was very close, a spinster. At least she was able, in her thirties, to support herself through her writings. Jane Austen died young, at age 41. Thus her life, her career, and Claire Tomalin's biography end prematurely. But as Jane Austen herself wrote, "If a book is well-written, I always find it too short." This book ended too soon. It is a beautifully written biography, highly recommended.