THE WORLDS OF JANE AUSTEN: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Novels
HELENA KELLY
Frances Lincoln Ltd (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$35.00 any edition, available now
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Explore the extraordinary life of Jane Austen in this fresh and engaging guide that reveals the real woman behind the beloved novels. Featuring expert insight, new research and over 150 photographs and illustrations, this is an essential companion for long-time admirers and first-time readers alike.
Despite the tranquil, even cosy, image of Austen and her work that still lingers in the popular imagination, her life in fact coincided with a period of intense, immense change, what is still sometimes called the Age of Revolutions. The American Revolutionary War began the year of her birth. By her eighth birthday, Britain had been forced to formally recognise the existence of the United States. The French Revolution broke out in 1789, when she was thirteen, and came close to her family: Austen’s cousin Eliza’s French husband died under the guillotine. When she was 22, there was an uprising in Ireland. All through Austen’s teenage years and her early adulthood, the old certainties were being subjected to challenge, new ideas were springing up—about democracy and freedom, about slavery, about poetry, about the position of women.
The Worlds of Jane Austen invites readers to see one of Britain’s most beloved authors in a completely new light. Far from the quiet world of country houses and tea parties, Austen lived through revolution, war and major social change, and her sharp, observant fiction reveals just how engaged she was with the issues of her time.
This lively and accessible guide features expert insight from bestselling author Helena Kelly alongside its over 150 photographs, artworks and illustrations that bring her world vividly to life.
Whether you are discovering Austen for the first time or returning to her novels with fresh eyes, The Worlds of Jane Austen is the perfect companion for curious readers, literature lovers and admirers of classic storytelling.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Jane Austen's 250th birthday is 16 December 2025. If you're among her legions of fans, celebrate joyously; if you're like me (mildly interested, not much bothered to be pro or con), remember how many of your friends love her and her stories...and take this as your cue to add this book to their Yule gifts.
I'm pretty sure any Janeite would like this as a coffee-table book, as a conversation piece, an ornament...but it's definitely got more than slick prettiness at its heart.
It's going to be a read, not just a look-and-lust, book, with information abour Austen, about the world around her, about the way she and her English people lived.
In bringing the times of Austen's life into focus, the text is maybe a bit less thrilling than the images, but that's an old guy with tons of history reading behind him. No matter your level of knowledge about the times, you'll find interesting nuggets and fun details to commit to memory. The images of Austen's more local sights are so deeply evocative as to be cultural icons in their own right.
The author doesn't dwell on or avoid controversies rampant in Austen's time. It's astounding to me that we can criticize the decisions about what to write about made by a two-hundred-eight-years-dead woman without even slightly critiquing modern political figures' elisions and silences.
I don't think Austen was to be reasonably held to our standards not because she was Above Criticism as a Genius, but because we are not capable of understanding how it felt, what pressures there were on her to need to write for a wide audience as a woman in a terribly repressive patriarchal system. (And NO this not remotely similar to today's repressive patriarchal system any more than it is similar to Classical Athenian or Roman patriarchal systems. Every era has its own iteration of the same horrors.)
That she never addressed the widespread abolition movement even tangentially is not, to my mind at least, to be accounted a failure on her part. It was a choice made for her own reasons that you and I don't and can't know or feel. Your or my response to those things not discussed are our impositions onto a past we cannot reasonably judge.
We can, and should, judge the art; we can, and should, judge the artistry inspired in the centuries since her death. This overview-with-illustrations is a very good way to experience the roots of the culture's enduring love for All Things Austen.
a few images from films or shows inspired by the storyverse of Jane Austen
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