A sympathetic biography by one author on another. The facts of Jane Austen's life can be picked up in any number of other biographies, but the strength of this short book is in Carol Shields' appraisal of Austen's influences and writing processes. Her research is tempered with empathy for her subject, making for an absorbing read. ( )

I've read a lot of great biographies on Jane Austen, but this one was truly excellent. First off, I would not recommend this for someone who knows very little about Jane Austen or her books, as a lot of basics are assumed in order to get on to things that better interest the knowledgeable "Janeite". I think that's why I enjoyed it so much---it was a refreshing take on the details behind that "Jane Austen Fact Sheet" that a lot of biographies seem to be drawing from.

I love Shields' metaphor of "glances" on page 3-4. She discusses how Austen never really goes into detail about some of the things that were so newsworthy in her day: the Napoleonic wars, changes in societal structure and the Church, advances in science and medicine. She describes Austen's dealings with them as "glances"---an implied commentary.

Another thing the biographer brought to my attention, in respect to the writer in me---and in Austen---was that Jane Austen never had that quiet place that I seem not to be able to write without. "The encouragement of her imagination did not arise from conditions offered her by others." I am always looking for that place of solitude---the "Perfect Place to Write." Yet, Jane Austen just wrote wherever she was and however she could---no matter what was going on around her. I can't expect others to pave the way for me. If I really want to finish that story that I'm working on, I need to make it happen.

After reading this short bio, I'm more encouraged to track down some of her published correspondence. Maybe I'll have the chance to find some on my trip to England next month. ( )

Well, I was definitely interested in the subject matter. This was actually the first biography of Jane Austen that I've read. And it was interesting and easy to read. But I wish there would've been more depth to it and I think it was altogether too short, the actual biography being less than 200 pages. But I would say this was an ok starting point for me. Looking forward to reading more :) ( )

I read this book as part of the Dead Writers Society's Genre Fiction Challenge for June 2016 and the Literary Birthday Challenge for 2016. At this point I am wishing I chose the other book for the genre challenge.

I don't know what to say here besides this entire book read as someone who seemed to think that Jane Austen was not that attractive, was bitter and angry that she was a spinster, and who apparently was jealous that her sister Catherine was away from her.

Shields really doesn't give you any insight into Jane Austen. She has a bunch of theories that are based on the books she wrote. For example, she says that Austen must have only loved bookish men because all of Jane Austen's heroes read books. Hell I remember reading Mansfield Park and I don't recall Edmund reading. I do remember how sanctimonious he was to Fanny though.

I really wish that Shields had stuck with a straight autobiography. Instead this whole book read like a very badly put together Buzzfeed article mixed with some references to Wikipedia.

I also really didn't like that the timelines were all over the place. Shields at times expects the reader to already know who people are at times and I got confused when she would retell certain people's biography again and again in the story (e.g. Austen's cousin Eliza is mentioned a lot in this book).

The writing is not much to write home about and I thought the flow was terrible. If the book had told a straightforward tale from Austen's birth to death that would have been something. Instead we jump around way too much.

I really don't know what else to say except that I found this book to be a complete waste of time and I only kept reading because I started to find it hilarious that if Shields saw that the color blue is mentioned in a story that must mean that Austen liked it. ( )

Insightful, although at times it seems that Shields tried to find Jane Austen in the contents of her fiction, and makes some powerful assumptions based on Austen's writing. One of these assumptions, that Austen may have been atheist based on the omission of any reference to faith in her books, is absurd. Disbelief would not have occurred to a clergyman's daughter in that era - or even later times - especially without outside influence, of which there was little in Austen's world. Despite other minor quibbles, mostly regarding a lack of focus, repetition, and financial details, this is a nice little book, useful for reference, that I will keep. Now I will follow up with a recent acquisition A Memoir of Jane Austen by her Nephew by James Edward Austen-Leigh as a comparison while Shields' work is still fresh in my mind, although without giving examples, Shields claims he "got a lot wrong". ( )

This is a solid little biography about Jane's life, going more into detail about how the events of her life shaped and affected her writing, than the actual life events. I know the basic outline of Jane's life and her publishing struggles, so it was interesting to get this author's insight into how Jane's life shaped her personality. I would recommend this for casual Austen fans as it helps give the authoress some life but isn't too heavy on details, keeping it from potentially being dull. ( )

Amazing that so short a book could be so unsatisfactory for so many reasons. Just a few examples:

Shields insists all throughout the book that Austen "longed" all her life to be married, and that any happiness she managed to find was because she learned to live with disappointment. (Shields also mentions how annoying it is when readers conflate a fiction writer's life with her writing, right after "explaining" how much Austen has in common with the heroine of "Persuasion.")

Hold this book carefully if you do read it. If you tip it the least bit, all the billions of "Austen must have"s, "Austen would have"s, and "Austen surely"s will fall out and break your foot.

Shields hates "Lady Susan." HATES it. How on earth can anyone who loves Austen enough to want to write even a brief biography of her not enjoy this darkly hilarious novella?

Shields describes the money left to Austen's sister, Cassandra Austen, as not very much -- "certainly not enough to live on." The sum was a thousand pounds. A YEAR. The main character family (mother, two grown daughters, and one teenager) in "Sense and Sensibility" manage to live in cozy gentility, employing three servants, on 500 a year. A thousand pounds a year for a single woman with no dependents would have been *ample.*

Shields says that Emma is her favorite Austen heroine. She describes Mr. Knightley as drawing up lists of books for Emma to read. In fact, Mr. Knightley mentions admiring the lists of books Emma drew up for *herself* to read at various times of her life. The reader gets the feeling that she spent more time writing these lists than she ever did reading. Mr. Knightley saved one of the lists for some time, but he *never* wrote one for her.

At the end of the book, Shields offers a bizarre list of body parts Austen never mentions in her novels, including toes.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say that halfway through this book, I was begging Jane Austen to die and put me out of my misery. ( )

Carol Shields has deftly woven together literary analysis with biography in her reconstruction of the life and times of Jane Austen. Unfortunately I am not familiar enough with her books to fully appreciate this book. A true fan of Austen's works will enjoy this book a great deal I'm sure. ( )

Erittäin mielenkiintoinen elämäkerta Jane Austenin elämästä tämän lapsuudesta kirjailijan kuolemaan saakka. Teoksen kirjoittanut ja itsekin kirjailija, kanadalainen Carol Shields (mm. Kivipäiväkirjat) luo kertomukselle viitekehyksen, ja kirjassa esiintyvä kirjailijan ääni soveltuukin hyvin tekstiin mukaan. Shields ei pyri kaunistelemaan tai romantisoimaan Jane Austenin henkilöhahmoa, vaan tuo myös esille tämän persoonan mutkikkaammatkin puolet, ja vaikea äitisuhdekin vilahtaa tekstissä. Austenin kirjallisia teoksia ja niiden henkilöhahmoja arvostellaan mielenkiintoisesti ja kattavasti, toki Shieldsin oman näkökulman takia myös puolueellisesti. Teos ei käsittele pelkästään Jane Austenia tai hänen teoksiaan, vaan kerronnassa on myös kuvattu 1800-luvun alun tapakulttuuria, kuten kirjeiden kirjoittamista, naisen asemaa, elämää perhepiirissä jne. Jos on kiinnostunut Jane Austenista, tai naisen elämästä 1800-luvun alun aikakaudella, kirja kannattaa lukea. ( )

If you are, like me, a crazed Jane Austen fanatic but do not want to read long and speculative accounts of our hero's life then this is the book for you. It is well written, short and to the point. There is really not much known about Miss Austen but Shields gives a good summary of what there is. I used to wish that more was known but have come to believe that it is better that we know so little. Let Miss Austen's beautiful writing speak for itself. However we do want to know the facts about her and Miss Shields lays them out in an appealing way. So I recommend that you fanatics out there read this book and learn more about the woman who has left a enduring legacy of great writing. If you are not an Austen fanatic (why you would not be I do not understand) but just interested in biographies of great authors than this book is also for you. ( )

As with other selections in the Penguin Lives series, the author of this biography is neither a scholar of her subject nor even an experienced writer of this sort of work. By her own admission, Carol Shields is an amateur, albeit a writer of fiction who has long admired Jane Austen’s novels.

Nevertheless, while I cannot assess this book’s accuracy, I found it to be a splendid work that offers exactly what I could have wanted in a biography of a literary figure. It provides a clear and concise exposition of Jane Austen’s life, placing her literary works in their historical context with appreciation and sensitivity. Unlike professional biographers who diminish their subjects in hopes of elevating themselves, Ms. Shields treats her subject with respect and admiration. She has a lovely style of writing that I found easy and pleasurable to read. Further, she offers insightful comments on the nature and content of Austen’s works.

“She seems to have understood that satire can never be used against the powerless... she concerned herself from the beginning with the sins of pretentiousness, pomposity, and sentimentality a thematic line that established itself in all her works….”

“Daughters achieve their independence by working against the family constraints, their young spirits struck from the passive lumpish postures of their ineffectual or distanced mothers….”

“The young often read Austen’s novels as love stories. Later, more knowing readers, respond to their intricate structures, their narrative drive, their quiet insistence that we keep turning over the page even though we know the ending. Still later readers come to appreciate the novel’s brilliance, laughing out loud not just at situations, but at turns of phrase….”

“It is a particular pleasure for the reader to find important moments buried in paragraphs that pretend to be flattened asides…”

and a reminder to the naïve reader who may miss the wit and irony in Austen’s work:

… we can see and hear the irony of author’s voice, an author who means exactly the opposite of what she is saying.”

One sometimes hears the criticism that Austen’s works deal with frivolous subjects “impervious to the historical universe in which she was placed,” ignoring major events of the day such as the rise of the mercantile class, of advances in science and medicine, and of major political events. Shields responds that her novels offer implied commentaries on the political, economic, and social forces of the day. “Austen’s short life may have been lived in privacy, but her novels show her to be a citizen, and certainly a spectator, of the far wider world.” Personally, I found that argument less than convincing. (In Pride and Prejudice, for example, the reader is given no clue as to why solders are stationed in the nearby town, or whether such a circumstance was at all unusual. Only through a knowledge of history could a reader realize that it was due to fears of an invasion from France at the time the novel was written). Nevertheless, Austen’s works certainly do offer strong commentaries on the society in which she lived, and implicitly on the tenuous position of women of her class, whose only chance of financial security lay with finding a husband.

Shields writes: “What is known of Jane Austen’s life will never be enough to account for the greatness of her novels, but the point of literary biography is to throw light on an author’s works, rather than combing the works to recreate the author.” In this regard, the author does not entirely follow her own principles. Here and there she supplements the scarce factual information available with speculation about influences on Austen’s work and about how she might or must have felt at a given circumstance.

Overall, I found Carol Shields' biography to be an excellent introduction to Jane Austen's life. In fact, I plan to keep this volume available for consultation as I continue to explore Jane Austen’s works.
_______
Note: another reviewer complains of two glaring proof- reading errors. I noticed one of these: on page 111, a character named "Emma Watson" is called "Emma Austen" ( )

At least two glaring proofreading errors -- I expect better from you, Penguin. Also, Shields declares Emma to be her favorite of the Austen heroines, and, even more egregiously, is most unkind to my wonderful Fanny Price. -cg

One imagines a sensitive novelist of particularity, such as Carol Shields, measuring herself in the process of writing this short literary biography of Jane Austen. For what better measure might there be? Now two hundred years since their initial publication, Austen’s novels continue to delight and surprise. Writing in obscurity away from the bustle of the writerly world of “workshops”, “MFAs”, “public readings”, “writer circles”, and “literary festivals”, without the input of her literary contemporaries, without the lucrative compensation of a hefty advance or a well-publicised book tour, with only the modest praise and encouragement of family and a few close friends, Jane Austen made the novel form her own. Shields strikes precisely the right tone here – respectful.

Shields’ prose is crisp and insightful, with just enough facts drawn from Austen’s correspondence and other sources to gently move along the progress of her life, whilst keeping the focus where it ought to always be, on Austen’s texts. A literary biography succeeds when the reader finishes it and wants immediately to immerse himself or herself in the subject’s texts. Reader, the desire to plunge headlong into a rereading of each of Austen’s novels is nearly irresistible. Delightfully recommended. ( )

Read my review at MyShelves.Wordpress.comAvailable at Teton County Library, call number BIO AUSTEN J SHIELDS ( )

If you ignore the author's own words about what she is trying to achieve, the biography is actually a pretty good one. But if you decide to believe the author in the first chapter, it becomes a bit more complicated.

Before starting to talk about the life of Jane Austen, Carol Shields explains her goal with this book. As part of that explanation she mentions that other authors that had presumed that Austen's novels are a reflection of her own life and thoughts and that they can be used for confirming what the actual Jane Austen had been like and that she "have attempted in this short life of Jane Austen to read into my own resistance, instead of seeking a confirmation or denial embedded in the fiction". That's the part where the author fails pretty badly - she tries at the beginning but as the book progresses, she turns to the novels more and more in order to explain what Austen had been like to the point where she says "Individual actions have social consequences in Jane Austen's fiction, and the same can be assumed for her life.". This is a far cry from how all this started... and is a much more clear indication on how the book is written than the sentence in the opening chapter. And there is another phrase thrown in almost at the end "... the point of literary biography is to throw light on a writer's works, rather than combing the works to re-create the author". When exactly this book's focus changed from the very first sentence cited above (and its almost promise not to use the novels for confirmation) and that last sentence where it is more about the books and not about the author?

Trying to decipher Jane Austen without looking at the fiction is impossible and probably will cripple the attempt. My issue here is not with the approach - it is more with the inconsistency of the author on what she is trying to do. But if we disregard that first comments (as hard as it is considering that they opened the book) and basically any comment about the purpose and idea of that book, the biography is a short and readable account of Jane Austen - mainly the author although the woman also shows up occasionally. We hear quite a lot about the novels, we hear a lot of comparisons between the books and the real life - the mix works well. We see the frustrations that Jane Austen lives through before she manages to publish her book, we hear all about the small curiosities of her life and the people that surround her. But gradually while the book progresses the focus shifts ever so lightly and even if the life is still there, long passages are about the books and what they are about... Is it unexpected in a writer's biography? No, not at all. But the proportions are a bit wrong - especially with all the bold statement from the beginning of the book.

Besides the main issue with that book, I still find it a satisfying one. I just wish the author had made her mind what she is trying to do exactly -- and had not started with one idea and ended up with another. Because that last cited sentence is much closer to what the book is than anything before that. And even it does not cover it fully because the human being Jane Austen is there not only as an author but as a woman. ( )

This slim biography of Jane Austen provides some insights into the famed author's life, but I was left wishing it provided more detail. ( )

As a fellow novelist, author Carol Shields brings a unique perspective to her biography of Jane Austen. In the first chapter, Shields writes: Traditionally Jane Austen's biographers have nailed together the established facts of her life--her birth, her travels, her enthusiasms, her death--and clothed this rickety skeleton with speculation gleaned from the novels, an exercise akin to ransacking an author's bureau drawers and drawing conclusions from piles of neatly folded handkerchiefs or worn gloves. In so doing, the assumption is made that fiction flows directly from a novelist's experience rather than from her imagination. While Shields then goes on to glean speculation from Austen's novels, she does so through the lens of a writer who knows how inspiration functions and who may therefore be able to discern the line between experience and imagination in Austen's works. Readers don't need to be Jane Austen experts, but do need a basic familiarity with her novels. While this isn't a work for scholars (there are no footnotes/endnotes), it isn't an introduction, either. Warmly recommended to Austen readers. ( )

Carol Shields can really write. Also, it's a concise telling of Austen's life, so you could probably read it in a day if you were so inclined.

I've read about seven biographies of Jane Austen, and this would be the one that I recommend that anyone read first. It pretty much sums up all that is really known about Austen's life and avoids the usual hazards of wild speculation and dubious reinterpretation. It does not desperately attempt to break new ground but considers the presentation of a solid, readable account of the subject's life as sufficient grounds for its existence. This is not to say that I accept everything that Shields says, but she does a commendable job.

There is one serious problem with this biography but I believe that it is the decision of the publisher, not the author. There is almost nothing in the way of documentation: bibliographies, sources, notes. I do like the books that I have read in this series as a good introduction to the various people covered, and as far as I can tell, they are reliable, but one has to trust Penquin's reputation. They are not scholarly.

I would recommend that the reader next consider David Cecil's Portrait of Jane Austen or Josephine Ross' Jane Austen: A Companion, or Debra Teachman's Understanding Pride and Prejudice: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents (The Greenwood Press "Literature in Context" Series), as a look at the author in context of her time. Ross' book has a nice selected bibliography of different types of Jane Austen studies and Teachman has extensive bibliographies of specialized topics. The recent movie, Becoming Jane, was inspired by Jon Spence's Becoming Jane Austen; I enjoyed both book and movie,

The interested reader should also realize that there are a variety of "specialty" books that focus on narrow topics. Nigel Nicolson and Stephen Colover's The World of Jane Austen: Her Houses in Fact and Fiction focuses on houses and places she lived in or visited; Audrey Hawkridge's Jane and Her Gentlemen: Jane Austen and the Men in Her Life and Novels considers the men in JA's life versus the men in her novels.

As for the other biographies that I have read by Tomalin, Nokes, Park, etc., one can get a lot of additional detail about the life of a typical woman of Austen's class, as well as trivia such as the weather around the time of her birth (Make no mistake, I LOVE such details) but the books are often weighted down with pretentiousness, unfounded speculation, doubtful agendas and side interests of the authors. By all means, I recommend them to people with an intense interest in Jane Austen, but not for the person who just wants context for her writings. ( )

Loved it. Was a good biography of Jane Austens life. Fast read as well. ( )

I decided to read Carol Shields’ biography Jane Austen for two reasons: first, because I knew about and admired the biographer; and second, because I hoped that reading a biography about Jane Austen would help me better comprehend and appreciate her novels. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy reading Jane Austen. I am just not as crazy about her as many bright, highly educated women I know. When I heard that Carol Shields, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Stone Diaries had written a highly acclaimed biography of Austen, I jumped at the chance to reeducate myself.

In the beginning Shields asks many questions. “How does art emerge? How does art come from common clay, in this case a vicar’s self-educated daughter, all but buried in rural Hampshire? Who was she really? And who exactly is her art designed to please? One person? Two or three? Or an immense, wide, and unknown audience that buzzes with an altered frequency through changing generations, its impact subtly augmented in the light of newly evolved tastes and values?” (p. 5-6) Throughout the biography, Shields does an amazingly delightful and scholarly job of exploring these themes. In the end, she states: “What is known of Jane Austen’s life will never be enough to account for the greatness of her novels, but the point of literary biography is to throw light on a writer’s works, rather than combing the works to re-create the author.” (p.175) Obviously, this was Shields’ intent, and in this reviewer’s estimation, she succeeds completely.

This biography was an absolute joy to read. It is short—under 200 pages. I read it in one sitting, never once feeling that the details overwhelmed. My interest never faded. Now, I find myself thinking about the many vivid characters in Austen’s novels and wanting to read them again in a new light.

It has been over twenty years since I last read any of Austen’s books, so detailed familiarity with her novels is not a prerequisite to understanding this biography or finding pleasure in its remarkable insights.

Shields is an extraordinary author in her own right. Her prose is clear, articulate, creative, often fun, and always on the mark. It is clear that she has a keen appreciation for Jane Austen’s literary style and a deep desire to understand the woman who created these magical works or art. I am enthusiastic after reading this biography and recommend it highly to anyone who wants a better appreciation of Austen, her person, her period, and her novels. ( )

It is a source of perennial frustration to Jane Austen's admirers that so little is known about her quiet existence as an unmarried woman with no outlet for her ferocious intelligence in genteel, rural England at the turn of the 19th century. Carol Shields, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Stone Diaries, has already proved herself a writer who can convey large truths with an economical amount of material, which makes her an excellent choice as Austen's biographer. Shields' brief but cogent text makes persuasive connections between Austen's novels and her life (the plethora of unsatisfactory mothers, for example, and the obvious sympathy for women barred from marriage by poverty and from careers by social custom), but she never forgets that fiction expresses first and foremost an artist's response to the world around her, not actual personal history. In fact, Shields argues, it may well have been Austen's sense that the novels she loved to read didn't provide a very accurate picture of the society she knew that fired her own work. Her merciless portraits of the economic underpinnings of marriage and family relations are in many ways more "realistic" than male writers' dramas of battle or females' fantasies of romantic bliss. As for her life's lack of incident, its one major disruption, her parents' move to Bath, prompted a nine-year silence from their formerly prolific daughter. Shields gleans as much as she can from Austen's letters, while remembering that they too gave voice to a persona not the whole truth, to delineate a quirky, sometimes cranky, sometimes catty woman who was by no means the perfect maiden aunt her surviving relatives sought to immortalise. An Austen biography will never be as much fun as an Austen novel, but Shields does a remarkably entertaining job of discerning the links between the two. --Wendy Smith

A succinct and fascinating biography of Austen by the late Canadian novelist Carol Shields, who brings a wealth of fellow feeling to her subject - along with a remarkably similar sense of humour. Superb. ( )