I've mentioned that I'm having a hard time concentrating on books lately. It's been hit or miss when it comes to what I feel like reading and what's more, what I can actually concentrate on and enjoy. Mysteries are always my reliable go to books at times like this (actually they are good all the time but I seem to be reading more of them lately than normal), but somehow a little nonfiction is appealing to me at the moment as well. I've had Claire Harman's Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World on my nightstand for a while now but haven't had a chance to read more than the preface, but I've decided it's going to be my "lunchtime" read and I think I'll settle down to it nicely.
I love nonfiction and often look longingly at my stack of biographies, histories and travel narratives (nonfiction gets its own very special pile), but I rarely read more than one at a time. It's not a matter of being able to keep the books straight--as long as the subjects are different. It's more a matter of nonfiction being so filled with facts and interesting information and knowing I'll never be able to not only process it all but keep it in my mind in a way that later I can pull things out to talk about them. Do I read for an impression, just the pleasure of taking in interesting information, or do I read to expand my knowledge? A combination of all of the above I guess.
But this is the 'Divine Jane' we're talking about here. Jane is ubiquitous. I feel like I already know all about her, but as I have started to discover, I know very little about her in actuality. I know she wrote only six novels and other earlier writings. Very few letters she wrote still exist. I know she never married. Did she fall in love as young woman (myth or fact, I guess I'll find out)? But really, I'm not sure how much I know beyond those few details. So I guess I have a lot to learn, but this is a study I will enjoy undertaking. Harman's book is not only a biography but also a look at Austen's cultural impact as well.
A few things I've already gleaned from my first day's reading (and sorry if you're already familiar with Jane, as usual I feel firmly behind the times!): Jane's family was a large one, six brothers and an older sister. Jane came from a very literary family. Harman writes that the Austens were a "close, loving, intellectually competitive household". Jane was actually encouraged to write, had no lack of access to books and paper and wasn't the only aspiring author in her family. It sounds as though her juvenilia was precocious and that each item had an "elaborate, mock-serious dedication to one or another member of the family circle". My teaser (it always takes me a while to get to my teaser, sorry about that) is about Jane's education and the books she read, which I found fascinating.
"Though the girls were later sent away to school briefly in Oxford, Reading, and Southampton, they spend most of their childhood in the more challenging intellectual atmosphere of their own home. At the rectory, there was a well-stocked library that included works of history, poetry, topography, the great essayists of the century, and plenty of fiction, for the Austens were 'great Novel-readers & not ashamed of being so' and subscribed to the local circulating library, which held copies of all the recent best sellers. Jane was a fan of Fanny Burney and Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe, Elizabeth Inchbald, and a host of less memorable eighteenth-century romancers, lapping up their stories and lampooning their more absurd conventions with equal glee."
Harman writes that from an early age Austen read like a potential author. I wonder, if she was alive today and writing (or trying to get published), which contemporary authors would she be reading? Do you think she's be in line at the library for Jonathan Franzen's new book? What a thought. I'll share more as I go--maybe that will help me remember more details. In any case, I think this should make for pleasant (and educational) reading.