Jane Austen: A Brief Life

New
Paperback
2017
$14.86

Every devoted reader feels that, in some way, they know Jane Austen. But how can we make sense of her extraordinary achievements? At a time when most women received so little formal education and none could obtain a place at university, how did Austen come to write novels that have commanded the attention of some of the most brilliant minds ever since? Why were hers the books that Darwin knew by heart and Churchill read during the Blitz? In this graceful introduction to the author's life and works, Fiona Stafford offers a fresh and accessible perspective, discussing Austen's six astonishing novels in the context of their time. Newly updated, Jane Austen: A Brief Life offers a rich and sympathetic insight into a writer who was just as much the Romantic genius as Keats, Shelley or Byron - full of youthful exuberance, intensely creative once she had found her individual voice, and dead before she reached middle age.

Synopsis

Every devoted reader feels that, in some way, they know Jane Austen. But how can we make sense of her extraordinary achievements? At a time when most women received so little formal education and none could obtain a place at university, how did Austen come to write novels that have commanded the attention of some of the most brilliant minds ever since? Why were hers the books that Darwin knew by heart and Churchill read during the Blitz? In this graceful introduction to the author's life and works, Fiona Stafford offers a fresh and accessible perspective, discussing Austen's six astonishing novels in the context of their time. Newly updated, Jane Austen: A Brief Life offers a rich and sympathetic insight into a writer who was just as much the Romantic genius as Keats, Shelley or Byron - full of youthful exuberance, intensely creative once she had found her individual voice, and dead before she reached middle age.

$14.86

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1 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 184
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 04 Jul 2017
ISBN 10: 0300232217
ISBN 13: 9780300232219

Media Reviews

Of all the books published on Austen this year, the most satisfying - perhaps because it has a succinctness and a refreshing absence of great claims that Austen herself would have appreciated - is Fiona Stafford's Jane Austen: A Brief Life. --Lucy Lethbridge, Literary Review--Lucy Lethbridge Literary Review (07/01/2017)

Author Bio

Fiona Stafford is professor of English language and literature, University of Oxford. She is author of The Sunday Times Nature Book of the Year, The Long, Long Life of Trees and presenter of two highly acclaimed series for BBC Radio 3 titled The Meaning of Trees. She lives in Bucks, UK.