Product Description

Jane's Fame is a valuable and illuminating addition to the ranks of Austen mania.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16672 in Books
• Published on: 2009-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 342 pages

Review
An exhilarating look at the rise of Divine Jane's worldwide influence. --Literary Review

Review
[A] deft, elegant exploration of the cult of all thing Austen.

Review
[A] witty examination of [Austen's] rise to world domination.

Customer Reviews

How We All Became Janeites
The reading public is not all clamoring for the next popular thriller. There are reasons to be confident that people are at least sometimes reading truly great literature. If you need evidence, look at the continuing popularity of the novels of Jane Austen. They have not always been popular, and were wrenched from obscurity decades after her death, but it does not seem as if they will ever need such a rescue again. In _Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World_ (Canongate), biographer Claire Harmon has given something of a posthumous biography, although she does provide some useful insights about Austen's life and attitude toward her work. The important chronicle here, though, is how Austen, well appreciated as an author by her family circle, had significant but minor success with publication in her lifetime, was forgotten, became a literary staple, and then became a phenomenon. Harmon expects that readers will know something of Austen's works (not a bad assumption to make), but her book even when concentrating on what academics have made of the novels is unstuffy and brightly written.

Austen died at age only 41in 1817. In the chapters devoted to Austen's life, Harmon tries (as have so many) to understand how this rural spinster could have produced such worthy novels. It was family influence that helped. Her family read. They talked about books, and they made fun of the bad ones and valued the good. "Jane Austen became a great writer," says Harmon, "partly because she was a great reader, and had a highly developed _consumer's_ understanding of her favourite form." Her family, though they loved her writing, underestimated the value of her novels, and certainly would have been surprised that generations later would find Austen a world-class author. The famous gravestone the family set down within Winchester Cathedral is full of praise, but does not at all mention that the lady wrote novels. After she was set beneath it, the family lost or discarded most of her papers and letters, and the early editions of her books were remaindered or pulped. Harman proposes that the turnaround began with a memoir from her nephew James in 1869. Aunt Jane was quiet, she was modest, she was a loving and lovable family member, went this portrait. That she was a careful and determined professional author was not emphasized, but she seemed simply a nice, ordinary, English gentlewoman. Readers rather liked this depiction; after all, many of them were nice, ordinary English gentlewomen, too, and so began a strain of affection for Austen that has not been equaled for any other author, and has continued to our day. Also like no other author does Austen repay the attention of the ordinary reader as well as the academic. Although her novels take place among the members of a few families in a village, larger themes of religion, nationalism, warfare, and slavery can all be cited, as well as the constant interest within women's studies.

The Jane Austen phenomenon is bigger today than twenty years ago mostly because of movies. More people come to her novels because of film and television, and of course some never get from the films to the original books. Harman is of course correct to consider this a real loss, but although Austen's reputation needed no boost, her visibility has certainly been increased. There are Jane Austen societies on either side of the Atlantic, with thousands of members who go to conventions and talk about the latest slant on the novels and participate in quizzes on trivia within the books (one scholar wrote about how badly fellow scholars do on such competitions: "We rarely recollect the colour of this character's dress or that servant's name"). In 1913 came the first sequel to the novels, a genre that continues to grow, and has branched out into tongue-in-cheek porn and even Austen-meets-Zombies or Austen-as-sleuth spinoffs. You can, if you wish, advertise your Janeite enthusiasm by an "I [heart] Mr. Darcy" bumpersticker. Miss Austen would be astonished. I would love to talk with her about all this; I have a feeling that she would be amused by all the spinoff novelties. Even zombie sequels, I would remind her, are a reflection of a sincere regard for her unmatchable originals. Harman's delightful book about increasing appreciation though the decades proves it.

The divine Miss Jane
This is a witty & informative account of Jane Austen's reputation since her death in 1817. Although the recent TV & movie adaptations have made Austen one of the most famous authors in the world, her books were out of print for several years after her death. Her reputation was only revived with the publication of the first biography written by her nephew in the 1870s. That was when the cult of dear Aunt Jane, the refined, elegant spinster, began. Austen's reputation in the 20th century was enhanced by the scholarly editions of the novels published by R W Chapman which was the beginning of the academic critics' interest in her work. The explosion of popular interest which began with the BBC's Pride & Prejudice in 1995 has led to hundreds of websites, blogs, movies, sequels & prequels of the novels. Harman explores everything from chick lit & the internet to serious academic works in this exploration of how Jane Austen conquered the world.

Amazing Jane
The full title of this book is Jane's Fame - How Jane Austen conquered the World and it is hard for modern readers to realise there was a time when Jane Austen was out of print and nobody was particularly interested in her after her death, though of course she has always had her supporters and admirers, Sir Walter Scott being one and Tennyson another ('Don't talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me where Louisa Musgrove fell!') Enter any bookshop in the land and there are shelves full of various editions of Jane's books, some with tie in TV covers (I loathe them), some with pastel chick lit type covers (I loathe them) and some super cool modern covers (I loathe them), the collected works in omnibus editions, DVDs, talking books and on it goes. Hard to realise a time when this was not the case.

Claire Harman's book tracks the growth of the Fame of Jane. The first part of this biography is fairly familiar ground about her family and her life and for those of us who are Jane lovers there is nothing new to discover, the interesting bit starts as we learn how the current Jane Industry grew slowly after her death and reached the global phenomenon it is now.

Admirers writing to members of the family would often be sent a piece of her writing, an autograph, a lock of her hair as requested, there was no sense of keeping all this in one place. Indeed, in her will Jane parceled out her various manuscripts and letters to disparate members of the family obviously attaching no future importance or interest to her work. When the Jane Austen society was eventually founded and Chawton restored and became the Mecca for all Jane pilgrims, the members had their work cut out to track everything down and restore it to her home for all visitors and fans to see.

I found Claire Harman's book fascinating and full of unknown, (well to me anyway) facts. I gather that during Jane's lifetime there were pirated editions of Emma in America and French translations of Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park, none of which she was likely to have heard about. One translator, Isabelle de Montolieu was a popular novelist in her own right and it was her name, rather than Austen's (in much smaller type of the title page) that was meant to attract readers. I rather like the sound of La Nouvelle Emma, La Famille Eliot and Raison et Sensibilitie, they have a certain air about them don't you think? It seems that Jane was also read in Russia and it has been suggested that Puskhkin might have read Pride and Prejudice as the similarities between this work and his Eugene Onegin have convinced critics that he must have read it. This gave me pause to ponder. OK Eugene Onegin is a regular Darcy, haughty and proud who rejects Tatyana because of the 'inferiority of her connections' but in the poem and the opera it is she who makes the running and is rejected, not the other way round as in P&P, and at the end of the book, when he realises he truly loves her, she has married another and sends him away. There is no real similarity in the story at all only in the character of Eugene Onegin himself. His friend Lensky, a poet, is a sub fusc Bingley but he ends up killing him in a duel. So I am slightly puzzled by this assertion. All interesting stuff though.

This post, if I am not careful, is going to turn into a DId you Know That which is what makes this book such fun to read. Did you Know That James Fennimore (Last of the Mohicans) Cooper wrote a novel called Precaution which was published in America only two years after Persuasion. Apparently he was challenged to writing such a novel by his wife when he had been reading an English novel and said it was so vapid he could do better himself. The similarities between the two books are most marked and, according to Cooper who many years later was very embarrassed by it, explained that he had never intended Precaution for publication and it had 'many defects in plot style and arrangement'. This is going on my list of books to Keep an Eye out For as it sounds a bit of a hoot.

Claire Harman explores the adaptations and the films and of course, reference is made to the BBC Pride and Prejudice of ten years ago (gosh seems like yesterday) and the Wet Shirt moment which has become so much an accepted part of Pride and Prejudice that readers coming to the book for the first time after watching the Andrew Davies dramatisation, were sorely disappointed to find that it was not in the actual book. Such is the power of television.

Wonderful though it is that Jane is now famous world wide, one sometimes feels that her six novels and other unfinished and junior works have been milked for all they are worth and that we are in danger of devaluing the currency that is Austen. There have been prequels and sequels and while I am not turning my nose up at these, I have read many of them with enjoyment (some are dire - I think those by Emma Tennant are poor while some are, quite frankly, on the edge of the pornographic. I don't really need to know what Darcy and Lizzie got up to in bed or that Jane and Bingley had a copy of the Kama Sutra - I kid you not), and the best among them are done with love and add to the story (those by Jane Aiken falling into this category), surely enough should be enough?


Claire Harman has written an immensely readable and fascinating book and one wonders what Jane herself would have made of all of this. I am sure she would have had something acerbic and witty to say about the folly of it all. Let's face it "One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other"....