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Claire Tomalin
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Jane Austen: A Life Hardcover – 15 Sept. 1997

by Claire Tomalin (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 731 ratings
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The six great novels of Jane Austen picture a world of civility and reassuring stability. Was this the world she lived in? Not quite,as this fascinating biography shows. From local archives Claire Tomalin has reconstructed the lives of her relatives and Hampshire neighbours. And there are many surprises too about the writer who deemed herself to be "formidable". Based on the original research for which Claire Tomalin is renowned, and including passages of literary criticism as well as intimate portraits of this remarkable writer, this will unquestionably be the definitive biography: a great biographer on a great writer.
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  1. Print length
    384 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Viking
  4. Publication date
    15 Sept. 1997
  5. Dimensions
    15.8 x 3.3 x 24.2 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    0670865281
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0670865284
  8. See all details
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Product description

About the Author

Claire Tomalin was literary editor of the NEW STATESMAN and SUNDAY TIMES. Her two previous books (both in Penguin) were the highly acclaimed and award-winning THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (about Dickens' mistress) and MRS JORDAN'S PROFESSION.
She is marriedto Michael Frayn, and lives in Camden Town, North London

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking; Second Impression edition (15 Sept. 1997)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670865281
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670865284
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.8 x 3.3 x 24.2 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 731 ratings

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Claire Tomalin

Claire Tomalin

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
731 global ratings
Book engaging
5 Stars
Book engaging
The condition of the book that was described l seem to remember as good would more accurately described as poor. Several pages were folded over. It looked greasy and rather grubby.Ms Tomalin is an excellent writer.
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John Hopper
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and readable biography
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 November 2021
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This is a brilliant biography of Jane Austen; I anticipated it would be, as I read the author's biography of Dickens back in 2012. She combines excellent, detailed research with an ability to tell a story of the subject's life that combines colour, incident and intelligent speculation based on her sources. This is more than just a literary biography, but also a history of the Austen and Leigh families, tracing their history back to the late 17th century; one of her great uncles born in the 17th century survived until Jane's teenage years. George Austen's clerical life combined with Cassandra Leigh's aristocratic descent in a successful marriage that produced six sons and two daughters. Jane was the shortest lived in a family that generally avoided the early mortality of most large families at that time and for long afterwards. There were plenty of scandals and jealousies and tensions as in all families, though Jane seems to have attempted to get on with all factions. Her literary career was very uneven, with her producing lots of short stories and poems from her teenage years, and before her 25th birthday having already written the first versions of what would later be published as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and (after her death) Northanger Abbey. Then she wrote almost nothing in the first decade of the 19th century, a decade punctuated by the death of her father, and moves around the country, including an unhappy period in Bath, before her final literary period in Chawton, near Winchester. In this small village her activities are described by the author as "making the very modest house into one of the great sites of literary history" - in a period of just six years Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, Pride and Prejudice in 1813 – and three further novels were written here, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion (Northanger Abbey was written earlier in the 1790s). She also wrote the first 12 chapters of a new novel which was eventually published as Sanditon over a century later. Her early death at the age of 41 in 1817 in Winchester deprived the world of a great literary talent - if she had lived into her 70s as did her father and most of her siblings (and her mother lived to 87) just imagine what further works would have flowed from her pen. A great biography.
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CBS
4.0 out of 5 stars A Life Not Fully Lived
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 April 2023
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This is a good biography that does its best, with fairly thin source material, to present an intimate picture of its subject. It looks at the life and times of Jane Austen from her birth in 1776 to her death at age 41 in 1817. Jane Austen was the youngest daughter -- second-youngest of eight children -- of George Austen, rector of Steventon in Hampshire, and his wife Cassandra Leigh. Quite apart from her siblings, Jane was a member of a very large extended family; as Claire Tomalin points out quite early, the reader has to be prepared to 'get on top' of this large cast of players -- all the "brothers, cousins, uncles and aunts" -- to be able to understand Jane and her world.

First and foremost, Jane Austen is famous -- even immortal -- for her six great books written in the 1790s and the 1810s. These are, in order of publication, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. I have read only the second and sixth of this list (my review of Persuasion is also on Amazon), so I am not especially a 'student' of Jane Austen and her works. Not having read the other four also limits somewhat my ability to read Ms Tomalin's book on a fully informed basis.

Quite an extensive scholarly 'industry' has grown up around Jane and her works. For all that, all the scholars share the same starting handicap: the dearth of source material giving insight into the person, emotions, thoughts, fears and writing techniques of their subject. Almost all of the personally written letters of Jane Austen were destroyed in the years after her death by her sister Cassandra and her niece Fanny. Jane left no diary or written personal reminiscences. Most of what can be written about her life is based on the few remaining letters, the lives and references of all her relatives and, of course, inferences that can be made from her six great novels. Tomalin's biography, in consequence, contains too much about all those relatives, too much narrowly based on the few letters, too much speculation of the "there must have been" (e.g., p25 of the paperback) kind -- and not at all enough directly about the persona of Jane Austen. This isn't a criticism of the biography per se. Ms Tomalin has done a fine job. There just isn't enough first-person material about Jane Austen. Taking out all the third-person stuff and inference from the novels might leave 50 out of 300 pages directly about or by Jane herself.

I do have one real gripe about the paperback book. The huge cast of characters makes the Jane Austen story almost unintelligible without a comprehensive family tree. I'm used to these being presented at the *start* of any book in which they figure. I had resigned myself to its absence and had resolved to 'make do'. Then, when nearly finished, I found exactly the family tree that was required -- but at the very end. My exclamation was not printable.

I will not here give my summary re-hash of the life of Jane Austen. This has been done thousands of times. Just a few observations follow. Claire Tomalin has probably done as well as is possible with the material available to her. The book was published in 1997 and can (surprisingly) come across as a little dated, especially in its gender assumptions -- see in particular Chapter 3, "Boys". Gender bias in the period 1790-1820 was extreme, of its time and to be expected; that is not my point. Ms Tomalin shows a few prejudices from 1997 that feel a bit anachronistic today. And I note this as someone who is definitely not uncritically accepting of modern gender ideology.

The first half of Ms Tomalin's book is about Jane's childhood and all the relatives. I found it a bit tedious. The second half is more adult and of more consequence; it was, accordingly, of more interest to me. Jane's brother, Henry, said of her after her death: "Of events her life was singularly barren: few changes and no great crisis ever broke the smooth current of its course.". Throughout the book, Tomalin tries hard to dispute the truth of this. But the neutral reader here has to agree with Henry. Jane was a very intelligent and clever lady, and a great writer, but it does seem that she lived life through others, always observing, always on the margins, rarely herself getting directly or emotionally involved. Her nearest thing to a true love affair, with Tom Lefroy, was over almost before it began. In the course of two days, Jane accepted and turned down a marriage proposal from the "perfectly decent" Harris Bigg. And that was it. In an age where marriage was the Holy Grail for gentle young ladies, Jane and her sister Cassandra 'chickened out' and "hurried into middle age" (paperback p184) and spinsterhood. Ms Tomalin tells us that Jane Austen also never articulated any views on religion, politics or women's rights. In her novels, she "took care not to write autobiographically". For me, this seems like more of Jane standing on the sidelines: observe but don't commit; comment but don't get involved. In short, it seems like failure to take on life in the manner of a mature adult.

In summary, while Ms Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen is mostly very good, I find the subject of the biography less admirable, while superficially attractive.

Jane Austen wrote the first three of her novels in the 1790s. A traumatic move of residence from Steventon in 1800 silenced her writings for ten years. When some years later she and Cassandra moved to the congenial surroundings of Chawton, Jane wrote the later three novels in the years after 1810. She died in 1817 of an illness that might today be diagnosed as lymphoma.

On p287 of the paperback, Jane Austen is summed up as "not an intimate but an acquaintance" and, in the words of Ms Tomalin, she is "at almost every point harder to summon up than any of them [her siblings and cousins]".

A great writer, Jane Austen; it seems not so mature an adult.
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M. J. Gilfedder
5.0 out of 5 stars Superb biography
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 March 2024
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An insightful, intelligent and well written look into one of history's most beloved and gifted writers. Given the lack of material to work with, Tomalin does a great job in bringing Jane and her family and friends to life. She critiques the six published novels and is perceptive in finding Jane there, her views and opinions and even parts of her personality. Jane Austen will forever remain something of a mystery but she has her novels to speak for her and in Tomalin's excellent biography an glimpse into the person and the genius.
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James Howard
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and thorough biography
Reviewed in Canada on 13 March 2023
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Tomalin has managed to produce a convincingly thorough of Jane Austen based on what appears to be exhaustive research given the sketchy data that is available.
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Poh
1.0 out of 5 stars Amazon, look into this matter.
Reviewed in India on 23 October 2020
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Please AMAZON, look into this matter, I have received a xerox copy of this book "JANE AUSTEN A LIFE BY CLAIR. WHY THESE book STORES gives fake xoreox books to customar? I am totally disspointed and going to cancel all my 3 books on the way.
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in Italy on 11 October 2020
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I’m reading the book and I think it is really interesting and well written!
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Tsefly
5.0 out of 5 stars Très bonne biographie
Reviewed in France on 6 February 2015
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Etant grande fan des oeuvres de Jane Austen, j'ai lu cette bio avec grand plaisir. Elle est très bien documentée et très bien écrite. Quand bien je connaissais déjà la vie de Jane Austen, j'ai appris de nouveaux détails qui éclairent encore plus la lecture de ses romans.
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Jennifer
5.0 out of 5 stars Jane Austen: The Life and Trials of a Single Woman and Author
Reviewed in the United States on 6 November 2010
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Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomilan is an excellent biography. For one thing, Ms. Tomilan writes about the facts of Jane Austen's life and doesn't try to embellish her existence. As the she points out in the beginning, Jane Austen's life was one of sorrow and hardship. Although Jane Austen is famous for her wry take on life and detached sense of humor, she lead a life that had many difficulties, Although these days being single is a common option for women, in Jane Austen's day it was not. In the Eighteenth Century, most women married and had many children. Often, the wives were worn out bearing so many babies and died in childbirth. Jane Austen saw at first hand the situation because of her brothers, their wives, and their children. Cassandra, her sister, and she remained "old maids." Because of this, they relied on their family for lodging and care. They were forced to submit to the finances of their family. Even though, Jane Austen produced many famous novels, she had to wait until her father and brother helped her with their publishing.

This is the second time that I read the biography and this time I found it very moving. The scenes are fresh and filled with family members. The English countryside is rendered as a vivid place. The trauma that made Jane Austen stop writing for eight years still comes as a shock. This event occurred when her mother and father decided after many years of living in the small town of Steventon, Hampshire, to suddenly move to Bath. Jane, who loved the countryside, her house, and her friends, became unable to continue writing her novels. During this time, Mr. and Mrs. Austen and Jane and Cassandra, traveled a great deal and lived in rented houses. After many years, the family returned to this area of England and eventually settled into a cottage; and Jane once again resumed writing.

The book is a wonderful introduction to Jane Austen. The Ms. Tomalin makes a careful study of her many novels, and also shows us the strength that Jane Austen manifested through humor, warmth, and constancy to her family even under stress.
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