Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA)
Manitoba: Winnipeg Region
These are books we like:
Lorna Recommends
The Watson Novels : Emma and Elizabeth ; Brinshore by Ann Mychal
“The Watsons”, an unfinished manuscript of Jane Austen, was so titled by her nephew, J.E. Austen-Leigh, in his 1871 Memoir. There have been those, who have attempted to complete this work, in the succeeding years, generally beginning with the fragment and then giving it
what would be considered an appropriate ending. The “Watson Novels”, by Ann Mychal, consists of two parts, firstly, “Emma and Elizabeth”, two of the Watson sisters. The second part continues the story, being titled, Brinshore. The author intersperses passages from the original fragment throughout “Emma and Elizabeth”. Brinshore is the neighbouring town of Sanditon, and so the part two chronicles the offspring of the Watson sisters amidst the backdrop of Brinshore. This two part continuation of “The Watsons”, entitled “The Watson Novels”, is well worth the read of over 500 pages and I, for one, found it hard to put down. There was always the anticipation, of what would happen next! Enjoy!
Literary Daughters by Maggie Lane
This insightful book, covers a span of over 150 years. It explores the influence on eight well known women writers by their fathers, on their lives and work. We first learn of Fanny Burney’s father being unaware and then astonished, when it is revealed to him, that his daughter has created a much talked about runaway best seller, in Evelina. A few of the the other famous authors included are : Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot(Mary Ann Evans) and Beatrix Potter. It ends with the life and work of Virginia Wool and her tragic ending, little of which I had known before. “Maggie Lane shows how literary women have had to contend with parental disapproval, encouragement, possessiveness or pride ...” Although Jane Austen is not part of the discussion, much was gleaned from this informative book about eight famous female writers. Very much recommend this book!
Hilda Recommends
Two books I've re-read and enjoyed very much:
Death Comes to Pemberley (fiction - 2011) by P. D. James.
I know it's been criticized but on the whole it's a good read, convincing to
the period.
The Victorian Governess (non-fiction - 1993) by Kathryn Hughes.
This is about what it says - the governess in Victorian England. Later than
Jane's time but in Emma she's leading up to it - with the 18th C. governess
Miss Taylor, who didn't have a bad life - and the modern governess Jane
Fairfax who seemed to be going to a terrible fate, thankfully saved by
marriage! The Victorian Governess has pages of bibliography which
indicates it was well researched. The Victorian governess had to be, first
and foremost, a LADY.
Neither of these are recent books so I don't know how available they are
now. Kathryn Hughes is a noted journalist and writer.
Pat Recommends
I would like to recommend " How to Be a Victorian" by Ruth Gordon. Ruby recommended it to me a few years ago and I have delighted in reading it. Ruth Gordon is a historian who specializes in the social and domestic life of Britain. She lived for a year on a Victorian farm. As the jacket says, " We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert. But what was it like for commoner like you or me? How did it feel to cook with coal and sprinkle tea leaves on the carpet? Drink beer for breakfast and clean your teeth with cuttlefish? Dress in whalebone and feed opium to the baby". Very similar to Lucy Worsley's book " If These Walls Could Talk" ( another book that I highly recommend ) , Ruth Gordon experiments with the various methods of personal and household care which makes the historical fact a real event for us. She shares the lives of actual families in a historical context. In Chapter 1 we begin the day and at the end in Chapter 15 we are getting ready for bed having experience an extremely full day. This book is available in the Winnipeg Public Library.
Happy Reading.
Celine Recommends
I have recently read In These Times: living in Britain through Napoleon’s Wars 1798 -1815 by social historian Jenny Uglow. I recommend this book to JASNA members because of the excellent insight it gives into the period in which Jane Austen lived.
“Award – winning social historian Jenny Uglow reveals the colourful and
turbulent life of everyday Georgian England through the diaries,
letters and records of farmers, bankers, aristocrats and mill –workers.
Here lost voices of ordinary people are combined with those of figures
we know, from Austen and Byron to Turner and Constable. In These
Times movingly tells the story of how people really lived in one of the
most momentous and exciting periods in history.”
(Overview from the book jacket.) Published by Faber & Faber
Jenny Uglow is one of my favorite biographers. I have read her prize –winning biography of Elizabeth Gaskell and also The Pinecone which tells the story of Sara Losh, forgotten Romantic heroine, antiquarian, architect and visionary.
This book is now available in paperback at your local bookstore.
Pat recommends
"I love it that Jane Austen 's novels invite us to read other authors to whom she has made reference and we are then reading what she and her readers would have read. I recommend:
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number21/ford.pdf
Susan Allen Ford's paper in Persuasion 21 "Romance , Pedagogy, and Power...Jane Austen's re -writes Madame de Genlis. I also recommend
"Adelaide and Theodore" by Stephanie-Felicite de Genlis as it is referred to in Chapter 53 of "Emma".
https://archive.org/details/adelaidetheodore01genl
The link below takes you to books online from Chawton House."
http://www.chawtonhouse.org/?page_id=55488
Celine Recommends
Jane Austen's Country Life by Dierdre Le Faye
Jane Austen's Journey by Hazel Jones
Jane Austen's England by Roy and Lesley Adkin
The Bronte Cabinet-Three Lives in Nine Objects by Deborah Lutz
The Real Jane Austen-A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne
Ruby Recommends
Jane Austen's Philosophy of the Virtue by Sarah Emsley
The following comments are offered by Pat who purchase this book on Ruby's recommendation and who clearly endorses Ruby's enthusiasm for it.
"I spent the evening reading "Learning the Art of Charity" by Sarah Emsley in her book "Jane Austen's Philosophy of the Virtues". The opening sentence to the chapter is " Emma is about the process of learning to respect other people, to tolerate differences, and to be charitable to others, and it is about the role of misery in the process of education.". The last two sentences are " In Emma, Austen focuses on the love of neighbours as well as its role in romantic love. Through intellectual suffering, Emma Woodhouse learns how to think about charity, and how she may live out charity in action.".There are numerous good references to other books ( which I own ) and articles. This book is worth every penny of the $83.00 that it cost me."
Pat Recommends
I just found something that you and others may be interested in if you do not already know. I have wanted to read all of the gothic books mentioned in Northanger Abbey. I have purchased all of the books but "The Horrid Mysteries 1796 by Marquis de Grosse (Carl Grosse) as it has not been readily available. But to my delight I found it in the following collection.
I just ordered for $1.02 on Amazon.ca "The Complete Northanger Horrid Novel Collection" for my Kindle Cloud Reader account, which means that I can read it on my lap top or on my I Pad. It has all 9 of the gothic novels mentioned in the novel. You just have to go to amazon.ca and type in "The Complete Northanger Horrid Novel Collection" and it will come up.
I am thrilled!
The print is a good size so it is easy to read. It has the two Ann Radcliffe novels as well. Last year I bought and read "The Midnight Bell" and loved it.
I like reading books that Jane Austen read or as with the "The Midnight Bell" her father read it to the family.
Pat has previously recommended:
"C.L. Lewis wrote, "There isn’t a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.” This evening as I sat with my cup of chai tea and my copy of “Jane Austen’s Country Life” , I was reminded of this quote. My, what a delightful book Deirdre Le Faye has given to us. "
Click here to read Deirdre Le Faye's essay "Jane Austen's Country Life".
Celine Recommends:
I would like to share with JASNA members two books which gave me particular pleasure recently.
THE WRY ROMANCE OF THE LITERARY RECTORY by Deborah Alun –Jones, published by Thames and Hudson.
A blurb from the publisher best explains the charm of the book:
Deborah Alun –Jones selects a range of authors from the 17th to the 21st centuries for whom the rectory was either the childhood home that nurtured their creative talent or the place they chose to live as an adult . Each chapter explores the life of a writer during the time they lived at a particular rectory, parsonage or vicarage.
The author examines the lives of writers and poets who were either the children of clergy - such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Dorothy Sayers – or who, as in the case of Rupert Brooke and John Betjeman, valued the romance and enduring values that these properties embody.
THE BALLAD OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH by Frances Wilson,published by Faber and Faber.
This is an example of the pleasures of rereading . I read this book when it was first published in 2008 and had equal satisfaction in opening its pages six years later.
I have long been an admirer of Dorothy Wordsworth because of the beauty of her nature journals and because of the influence she had on the work of her brother William. She was born in 1771 so she would have understood the England in which Jane Austen grew up.
Frances Wilson’ biography presents a character more subtle and complicated than the devoted, self – effacing Dorothy of tradition,both as a member of the Lake School and as an individual voice. Her Oxendale and her Grassmere Journals give vivid descriptions of people, places and incidents that inspired some of William Wordsworths’s best-loved poems and are in themselves exquisite nature writings.
I encourage you to add to this list so we can all share in the joys of each other’s reading.
The Jane Austen Project was launched by HarperCollins in 2013. Six contemporary novelists were asked to “re imagine” Jane’s six novels. At our last meeting Ruby discussed the first to be published, Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope. The second in the series has now been published, Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid ( name not familiar ) The book was favorably reviewed in the last issue of The Times Literary Supplement. McDermid’s Cat Morland is a replica of Austen’s 17 –year old heroine Catherine Morland. The same is true of the other characters that go to Edinburgh for the Festival instead of to Bath for the Season. “There is plenty to be admired in McDermid’s transposition. It is an amusing intellectual exercise to spot the numerous parallels in this parody of a parody and her version may encourage readers to return not only to the original but also to Radcliffe’s novel as well as other Gothic titles such as Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) It is more than doubtful whether readers who do not know the original will find this story compelling. Catherine was always a little too naïve to be persuasive but no teenager today could be quite as ignorant of the ways of the world as Cat.”
Lorna Recommends:
A Fine Romance- Falling in love with the English Countryside
by Susan Branch
Having collected Susan Branch’s cookbooks over the years, I was intrigued by this latest book offered by her. It is a part diary/travelogue of her and partner Joe Hall’s twenty-fifth anniversary.They crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 and spent two months wandering the English countryside. Not always, but at times permitted to take photos inside a particular museum or home, she was granted the opportunity to show us inside the Jane Austen House Museum. With a spattering of photographs, water coloured illustrations and even the a few recipes, this book has been a great success for her, going into a third printing. Her and Joe have been crisscrossing the States attending book signings in their signature van. She has a blog worth looking at, showing life on Martha’s Vineyard where she resides.
Longbourn by Jo Baker
With a bit of trepidation, I would recommend this book. It is at times a grim and gruesome account of the life of servitude in Jane Austen’s era. There are a few surprises and twists in this well written account of the lives of the servants at Longbourn, the residence of the Bennett family. The author interweaves the life upstairs in Pride and Prejudice, with that of the downstairs servants. Jane Austen never dwelt on “guilt and misery “, but Ms. Baker has taken us into the life of another class of people that Miss Austen didn’t! There is however, a happy ending which should satisfy Jane Austen devotees!
Celine Recommends:
What to Read When You're Not Reading Jane Austen
However unlikely it may be that you tire of reading Jane Austen herewith is a
list of 'Must-Reads' for women.
The Poetry of Jane Austen and the Austen Family edited by David Selwyn .
This book contains all the known poems of Jane Austen herself and a selection written by , among others, her sister Cassandra, four of her brothers, an uncle, a nephew and two nieces. This book was published by University of Iowa Press, in association with the Jane Austen Society (England)
The Real Jane Austen, a Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne. This is an intriguing non-chronological biography which uses simple artifacts from Jane’s life to explore the world in which she lived. The result is a fascinating narrative of the social and cultural history of her time.
Jane Austen’s England by Roy and Lesley Adkins. The authors are husband and wife historians and archeologists who bring an interesting perspective to their work. They draw upon a wide array of diaries, personal letters and newspapers as well as Jane Austen’s own letters to chart the daily life of the gentry and commoners of the late 18th – early 19th centuries.
A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew James Edward Austen –Leigh. This is a first –hand account written by someone who knew the author and who had access to others who could similarly write their recollections. It is a valuable primary source.
A Portrait of Jane Austen by Lord David Cecil. He combines scholarly attention to detail with accessibility to the general reader. The style is clear and elegant and the biography is scholarly without being pedantic or dull. The book is beautifully illustrated.
The Parson’s Daughter by Irene Collins. The main focus is how the religious views of Jane Austen, and the values of the household in which she grew up, influenced her, her views of the world, and her writing. It can be seen as a supplementary biography furthering the information in Tomalin’s or Myer’s work.
Obstinate Heart by Valerie Grosvenor Myer. This biography is an excellent introduction for those who have never read a life of Jane Austen. It offers a recapitulation of the well –established events of her life without making any great claims to originality.
Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin. The focus centres on what life must have been like for an intelligent and highly gifted woman of the gentry class hemmed in by the constraints of a tight domestic circle at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Jane Austen by Carol Shields. A Penguin biography in short form. Shields is interested in exploring Jane Austen’s evolution as a writer. Austen wrote at a time when the novel form was still evolving and Shields leads the reader on a fascinating exploration of her creative growth.
Pat Recommends:
Persuasions Journal Volume 30 No. 2 Spring 2010 (Jane Austen's Reading: The Chawton Years). In this article, the author references Jane Austen's reading to her letters and to her novels . An excellent resource for someone who wants to "read what Jane Austen read".
Annotated Editions of Jane Austen's Novels Edited by Either David Shapard or Patricia Meyer Spacks.I have both and have found each one to be an excellent resource for further understanding of the culture of the era in which Jane Austen has written. Each gives a very helpful reference to other books. I like to read articles and books that lead me to other resources for a greater understanding of Jane Austen's works and these two editors are very good at providing the information.
Those Elegant Decorums...the Concept of Propriety in Jane Austen's Novels by Jane Nardin. The opening sentence is "In Jane Austen's novels, a person's social behaviour is the external manifestation of his moral character". Professor Nardin analyzes the way in which Jane Austen blends ironic criticism with moral affirmation.
