Jane Austen's Letters by Jane Austen Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $15.56 You Save: $9.44 (38%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $9.99 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Jane Austen's Letters
Book Review: Shoddy treatment of such valuable things!
Summary: 2 Stars
I dare not argue with the importance of Jane Austen's letters, nor with the pleasure to be obtained by reading them. This edition, however, is the poorest-bound book I have ever seen! I just received it in the mail, and the copyright page has already fallen out. The margins are equally dismal, and I am afraid one reading will finish the whole thing off. Buy this edition if you must, but find a better copy if you can.Book Review: Great insight into an author who didn't write enough!
Summary: 5 Stars
I think all Austen fans lament her early death - only six completed novels just isn't enough!
These letters do help fill that gap. Austen was smart, honest, funny; you can hear her voice so clearly in these letters. It is a shame that her sister destroyed most of her letters before she died (since she thought they were too indecent or personal or just downright mean!), but I allow Austen SOME privacy! These letters are just wonderful.
The only slight drawback is that, as a lay person, the layout was a little cumbersome. I'm not a Regency expert, so I needed to keep flipping back to the explanatory notes to understand the language. That flipping became annoying at times. I would prefer to have the notes at the bottom of the page so I could scan them without leaving the body of the letter. Just a personal preference thing, though.
Book Review: Disintegrating letters.
Summary: 3 Stars
I had already read Jane Austen's letters but wanted to have my own copy. They give a fascintating insight into her life, although somewhat limited by the fact that her sister Cassandra burnt all of Jane's leters to her after Jane's death. Unfortunately the copy I have recently bought is poorly bound and the pages started coming loose the first time I opened it. I just couldn't be bothered returning the book from New Zealand.Book Review: The Best Source For Austen-ites Ever!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best edition of Austen's letters ever published. It includes recently discovered letters from Jane Austen or about Jane Austen. It also provides details regarding the postmarks on the letters and an index (with description!) of the many people, servants and friends in Austen's life. While this book doesn't provide much cultural context or criticism, serious students of Jane Austen will learn more about Austen's authorial project and her daily life. While we can never know Austen as a person, we can get a sense of her life, her family, and the pressures she faced on an intimate level. It is interesting to find the paralells between Austen's letters and her novels. Astute readers will find that Austen was witty and sarcastic outside of her novels as well. I used this book as a resource in a college class in which we only read Austen's novels, and found her Letters to open up the texts in suprising ways. An excellent tool that should be part of your Austen collection!Book Review: A Must Have for the English Regency reference shelf
Summary: 5 Stars
Primary sources are always the best in understanding the mindset of a period. Here we have a thick collection of Jane Austen's letters, which have been very well annotated by the editor. The contrast between the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson (who lived in the same period, published by the famous courtesan in 1825) are hilarious. Witty but staidly Anglican Jane at one point savagely attacks the very high aristocrats romping their scandalous way through Harriette's world, that "race of Pagets". Jane Austen's letters let us have a glimpses of what daily life in the English gentry and aristocratic class was like in Regency England; seeemingly trivial details such as the buying of Wedgwood china with the personal crest, buying the breakfast set separate to the other china sets (longing to see what a Regency breakfast set looked like! The breakfast set is mentioned in Sense and Sensibility) are actually very difficult to find out about, it is not something historians generally write about. The notes by the editor are fascinating and could lead to further research, for example how did one lord prove his title after being a Dublin potboy? And the gentleman who divorced his wife after the proper lady decided to become a professional actress...usually it was the other way around, the actress became a proper lady! The biographical details added by the editor on various gentry/aristocratic families mentioned in Jane Austen's letters are very tantalising.