WILD FOR AUSTEN: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane, excellent self-gifted read

WILD FOR AUSTEN: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane
DEVONEY LOOSER
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Incisive, funny, and deeply-researched insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen, by the preeminent scholar Devoney Looser.

Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we’ve given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.

All six of Austen’s completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen’s juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen’s relationship to the abolitionist movement and women’s suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen’s works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition, and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels used as evidence in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction.

Written with warmth, humor, and remarkable details never before published, Wild for Austen is the ultimate tribute to Jane Austen.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Over eleven hundred endnotes.

One thousand one hundred plus end notes.

I was very very shocked to see this in its glory inside a non-academic book, albeit one by an academic who has spent her career toiling in Austen's vineyard. It's clear from reading this work that Author Looser thinks about Austen very much in a framework. An academic, analytical approach to what I can only describe as a wildly partisan, excitedly appreciative paean to Austen for her 250th birthday (tomorrow as I post this review).

I was very entertained by the discussion of Austen's work in "Wild Writings" because I'm not an Austenite. There are so many reasons for that...I'm male, and men come off very poorly indeed, is not one. Most come down to the absence of my chemistry response going ping the way it does with Eliot or Trollope or Anna Katharine Green. It's weird, but there it is, and reading Author Looser's warbles of rapture makes me feel vicariously the heights of appreciation my more muted pleasure won't reach.

In the second section, I switched on fully, thoroughly enjoying Austen's fascinating family relations. It's a section very aptly titled "Fierce Family Ties." Fierce is a good descriptor! Abolitionists, suffragists (not the later versions, but advocating for general male enfranchisement), progressives of all stripes...Jane Austen, lady novelist, also had lady novelist cousins...no matter where one looks, one finds her situated amid those who want to change the status quo for what looks to my twenty-first century eyes like the better.

Part three is Jane's afterlife, her posthumous career as an ikon. Here I felt uninvolved,uninspired...it took me two weeks to read this section because y'all superfans, well, when I don't share an obsession it's hard to work up enthusiasm for it. It was informative but not about something I care to learn about. That's the missing half-star explained.

I'd recommend this read to the holiday-weary Austenite because it really situates y'all in a cultural mainstream that's brought huge joy to the world. Could anything be more apt for a self-gifted read?

THE WORLDS OF JANE AUSTEN: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Novels, celebrating 250 years of the beloved authoress

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.

the table of contents...we're going a lot of places!

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.

chapter one's opening spread...you see where the book's headed

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.

the French Revolution happened when Austen was thirteen

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 eternal, fixed image of "English countryside"...thanks in part to Austen

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.

when many in Austen's circle profited from slavery, is it any wonder she kept quiet about it?

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