Jane Austen at Home: A Biography

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While Jane did not forget Lyme, the town did not forget her, either. You can still eat at Jane’s Cafe, walk in Jane Austen’s Garden, and buy souvenirs in the Persuasion gift shop today.” Although Mr George Austen (thirty-eight) and his wife Cassandra (twenty-nine) had only been married for four years, their household was not inconsiderable. It included Mrs Austen’s own mother, Mrs Jane Leigh, and the couple’s three boys: James (‘Jemmy’), George, and Edward (‘Neddy’), the latter less than one year old. There would also have been maids and manservants, of name and number unknown. They probably included Jane Leigh’s servant Mary Ellis.

Jane Austen At Home | Bring Jane Austen Home Page 2 Jane Austen At Home | Bring Jane Austen Home Page 2

Worsley is Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces but is best known as a presenter of BBC Television series on historical topics, including Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011), Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls (2012), The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (2014), A Very British Romance (2015), Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey (2016), and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (2016). Several of the homes in which Austen lived were in Bath. Before reading this biography my only notion about the city of Bath was from her novels. Well, she left a lot out of the novels. Worsley draws a marvelous picture of the town, the squalor and the fading grandeur, the bathing habits and the coed baths. One would naturally think of Bath as a place of recuperation and health, but one risked one's life to actually live and bath there. I will say no more other than that I will never forget the Bath of the early 1800s as described by Worsley. Worsley writes with a historian's acumen and a Janeite's passion...This volume is sure to delight Austen fans."— Library Journal, Starred Review Finally, what annoyed me most consistently about this book was the way Worsley persists in "finding" Austen in her novels. She pushes the idea that Austen represented her views about life in this character or that; Austen's plots must reflect the emotion and characters of her life. I just don't buy it. I will swallow that she based Emma off of her two favorite nieces, but not that her writing represents some secret, deep feelings she couldn't otherwise express. Worsley’s style of writing is clear, entertaining and easy to read, I flew through the book. The information that is presented is very well researched and gives a real idea of who Austen really was and what she looked like. What Austen looked like is hard to determine, but Worsley presents a clear image that is oddly familiar. Austen becomes a “modern” woman with a temper and a want of independence.As time passes books are published but illness descends and we are taken towards the tragic early demise of this great author. We see how fine a sister Cassandra is as well as some friends and family. The final chapter discusses the works of Jane after her death and what happened to the people and homes from within the story. There is also a interesting thread throughout that shows how the family tried to tweak/re-write history around Jane (for the better or at least so they thought). Steventon Rectory, as Jane’s parents knew it, had a carriage drive, or ‘sweep’, at the front to bring in vehicles off the road, an important mark of gentility. There was a pond, and a ‘screen of Chestnuts & firs’. To the sunny south side of the house, behind a thatched mud wall, was ‘one of those old-fashioned gardens in which vegetables and flowers are combined’.38 I loved this biography of Jane Austen so much that while reading it I was bursting with enthusiasm and couldn't stop talking about it. mystrangereading Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley ⭐️⭐️⭐️ A very interesting look at Jane Austen and her family's life. It was clearly very well researched, and I appreciate how as it followed her life it paralleled the books she wrote. Biographies are difficult for me to get through, but I found this one to be engaging enough to keep me curious and reading! The story of the Austens at Steventon Rectory really begins in the late summer of 1768, when a wagon heavily loaded with household goods made its way through the Hampshire lanes from nearby Deane to the village of Steventon. Its members had no notion that so many historians and biographers would scrutinise this ordinary event in the life of an ordinary family.

Jane Austen at Home (Audio Download): Lucy Worsley, Ruth Jane Austen at Home (Audio Download): Lucy Worsley, Ruth

This is a superb book. The discovery, research and creation of the story of Jane through and within her homes is superb. It is a trademark of Lucy Worsley's that this is so and why she is such a superb historian and communicator. This is a meticulously researched bio of Jane Austen, warts and all. We follow Jane and her family from home to home, including schools, visits, vacations, assemblies, even occasional Inns. This is a book by a Janeite for Janeites. There were some points where I was reading about cousins and neighbors and wondering 'wait where is Jane in all this again?' At Godmersham Jane was made to feel like the poor relation. Her niece Marianne, shown here with two of her sisters, described how Jane would sit sewing quietly, then suddenly burst out laughing as she thought of a joke for one of her books. ( Editor’s note. This passage made ME burst out laughing!) Lucy Worsley writes beautifully and seamlessly and her interest in and enthusiasm for in her subject is contagious. This is a very long book that is fascinating from beginning to end. Not surprisingly, Jane had a strong personality and knew her own mind to which we are privy through the letters which she wrote constantly to friends and family. She also kept a personal diary. It is mostly through these writings, along with some letters from friends and family upon which this memoir (and all academic discussion about Austen) is based and draws it's conclusions. Worsely studied these writings, sharing many excerpts with her readers, allowing us to understand the conclusions she draws and how her conclusions differ from the conclusions drawn by others.

On the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death, historian Lucy Worsley leads us into the rooms from which our best-loved novelist quietly changed the world. The parish of Steventon, where Jane would be born, contained only thirty families. According to one of Mr Austen’s predecessors as rector, its management should give little trouble as it contained no Papists, nor Dissenters, nor any ‘nobleman, gentleman or person of note’.26 The men grew turnips and beans, while the women worked at home, spinning flax, or wool from the sheep that wandered Hampshire’s hills. Or sometimes they went out hoeing the turnips themselves. One traveller reported that the female field-workers of Hampshire were ‘straight, fair, round-faced, excellent complexion and uncommonly gay’. At the sight of the stranger, they ‘all fixed their eyes upon me, and, upon my smiling, they bursted out into laughter’.27 She also had a very well developed sense of the ridiculous and a sense of humour which could see something amusing in most situations. She also enjoyed misleading people and her letters and the novels can be read on many levels and it is very far from clear whether she is joking or being serious.

Jane Austen at Home: A Biography, by Lucy Worsley — A Review Jane Austen at Home: A Biography, by Lucy Worsley — A Review

Worsley's cleverly implements certain sections of Austen's own letters to corroborate with her image of this author. At times her suppositions and speculations regarding Austen's character and motivation are made to seem as facts. Unlike other historians and biographers, who often misconstrued Austen's personality and life, Worsley seems to imply at a personal connection to her subject, one that makes her into one few capable to discerning the truth about Austen. Curiously enough Worsley reveals that: “I was once a pupil at the Abbey School myself, and Jane Austen was our most famous ex-student”. Jane's life itself doesn't sound very interesting; based on the facts that she never married or had children. She also seemed to have lived a quiet sort of life, she wasn't involved in scandals or anything like that. Which doesn't sound all that interesting, but in truth her life story is fascinating!As Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces, Lucy Worsley is a popular historian and writer well known for her television programmes on aspects of British history. In these however she lightens her erudition with simpering innuendo and sadly indulges some of that characteristic here. There are occasional rather desperate attempts to provide sensation: ‘The sea in Emma stands firmly for sex’ is one of the more lurid.

Jane Austen at Home - Lucy Worsley (paperback) - Chawton House

This is my kind of history: carefully researched but so vivid that you are convinced Lucy Worsley was actually there at the party - or the parsonage.' Antonia Fraser I thought the whole book was fascinating, and the author's examples from Jane's work made me want to reread all her novels. (Although this is not a new phenomenon; on any given day, whatever I'm doing, I'd likely rather be reading a Jane Austen novel. Or watching one of the movies.)

Life in Bath and later Southampton (1801-1809) is detailed in “Act Two: A Sojourner in a Strange Land.” During this time, Jane’s father died, leaving the Austen women dependent on Jane’s brothers for financial support. One highlight of these chapters is the explanation of the Stoneleigh inheritance as it related to Jane’s family. While I have struggled to understand these events in previous Austen biographies, Worsley does an excellent job of unraveling the conflicting claims to an estate belonging to a branch of Mrs. Austen’s family, the Leighs. The possibility of a substantial legacy from the estate of the Honourable Mary Leigh dangled temptingly before Jane and her family for a number of years, but ultimately Jane’s wealthy relations, the Leigh-Perrots, won out, leaving Jane and her family to fend for themselves. Anyway, I enjoyed this biography so much that I want to get my own copy and add it to my Austen shelf. "One can never have too many biographies of Jane Austen," is a thing I have actually said. As the book and Jane's life progresses the writing, the talent and the struggle to be published are covered; so well and so clearly with detail that one feels in the room when Jane meets a publisher or writes to seek a deal or help. We read of her brother's help to get a deal...but it is neither perfect or the step hoped for. And often Worsley used this BBC-type of tone that sounded both patronising and childish. Her attempts to engage the reader seemed a bit cheesy. What can the places that Jane Austen called home tell us about the author’s life and work? In Jane Austen at Home, historian, author, and BBC presenter Lucy Worsley looks at the author’s life through the lens of Austen’s homes. As Worsley notes in the book’s introduction, “For Jane, home was a perennial problem. Where could she afford to live? Amid the many domestic duties of an unmarried daughter and aunt, how could she find the time to write? Where could she keep her manuscripts safe?” (1) Worsley seeks to place Jane Austen “into her social class and time” while admitting that, as an Austen reader and biographer, she has a vision of the beloved author that allows Jane to speak for her and to her circumstances. “Jane’s passage through life, so smooth on the surface, seems sharply marked by closed doors, routes she could not take, choices she could not make. Her great contribution was to push those doors open, a little bit, for us in later generations to slip through.” (4)