Jane Austen at Home: A Biography

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I was born in Reading (not great, but it could have been Slough), studied Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford, and I've got a PhD in art history from the University of Sussex. 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. Jane Austen at Home offers a fascinating look at Jane Austen's world through the lens of the homes in which she lived and worked throughout her life. The result is a refreshingly unique perspective on Austen and her work and a beautifully nuanced exploration of gender, creativity, and domesticity."--Amanda Foreman, bestselling author of Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire 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! George Austen’s mother, Rebecca, had died when he was a baby, and his father William, a surgeon of the town of Tonbridge in Kent, had remarried. When William Austen died too, it emerged that he had not updated his will at the time of his second marriage. This meant that George Austen’s stepmother could legitimately claim that her interest in her husband’s estate took priority, and that she intended not to bother any more with her stepchildren. Six-year-old George and his two sisters Philadelphia and Leonora had to leave the family home in Tonbridge. They were now under the care of their uncles.

Jane Austen at Home, by Lucy Worsley Book review: Jane Austen at Home, by Lucy Worsley

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. Lucy Worsley gives us Jane's life through the places she lived, and her few possessions. She never had a place of her own, as spinsters and widows were dependent on family charity for their survival in the early 19th century. Jane apparently had at least five chances at marriage, but never found her Mr. Darcy, and decided to let her novels be her children. This biography gives a fascinating history of her and her family, and my only complaint was that I would have liked more information about Cassandra, without whom Jane would not have been able to devote time to her novels. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire. There were lots of surelys and no wonders, and a lot of rhetorical questions, which yeah, didn't really work. If anything they reminded of her presence.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”. Worsley examines the rooms, spaces and possessions which mattered to her, and the varying ways in which homes are used in her novels as both places of pleasure and as prisons. She shows readers a passionate Jane Austen who fought for her freedom, a woman who had at least five marriage prospects, but--in the end--a woman who refused to settle for anything less than Mr. Darcy. 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). Jane lived a life surrounded by people, her letters which we are frequently quoted throughout the book tell us about all their comings and goings. Jane travelled quite a bit, she had firltations, she danced she went to the beach and met the prince Regent! She was also a very independent and intelligent woman, which I think this book showed us. Jane didn't want to settle and marry just anyone, Jane wanted to marry for love and only love.

Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley | Goodreads

I can say with some confidence that, after reading this book, you will never read Jane Austen’s works in quite the same way again. I also wonder if, like me, your mental picture of Jane Austen is a blend of the famous ‘portrait’ by her sister Cassandra and Anne Hathaway’s memorable portrayal in TV’s (historically inaccurate) ‘Becoming Jane’? If so, you must read this brilliant new work by Lucy Worsley. I suoi romanzi, in parte per problemi editoriali (c’erano pure allora), conquistarono all’inizio un numero ristretto di lettori che aumentarono nel corso del tempo, destinati ad essere interpretati da molti lettori come romanzi d’amore (lettrici comprese ***) o letti con diffidenza da molti uomini che navigano nelle secche del pregiudizio. I was completely unprepared for how much I would love this biography of Jane Austen. For some reason, I expected it to get bogged down in too much detail or for it to be too academic. She does touch on some academic disputes in some areas but only enough to pique my interest. Worsley offers us much that Austen's admirers wish to know...with humor and poignancy and common sense, just as Austen would have wished."—Amy Bloom, New York Times Book Review He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.Throughout the biography, Worsley provides vivid details of the homes, furnishings, gardens, and neighborhoods where Jane Austen lived, bringing these places to life. We also see the influence that these homes exerted upon Jane and her work. Worsley takes us through the ups and downs of Jane’s life, the family celebrations and disasters, and most revealingly, the everyday aspects of life that she so realistically observed and captured in her novels. The only improvement to the virtual tour of Jane Austen at Home that I could wish for would be an actual tour with Lucy Worsley as a guide. George Austen worked nearly as hard as his admirable uncle, and ended up with a cosy nook as a Fellow at an Oxford College. But when he met Cassandra and decided to marry, he was forced to give up his fellowship. It was a position intended only for single men. Still, I did find that when Worsley was merely writing about the Georgian era (the lifestyle and traditions of those of Austen's class). There were some interesting tidbits abut their customs and daily routines. You might wonder why George Austen needed two livings, and how he could preach in both churches at once. As they were close together, he could dash from one to the other, and their combined income enabled him to live like a gentleman, or as close an approximation to it as he could manage. Later on he would subcontract the work of the smaller parish to a curate.

Jane Austen’s Stuff, and What We Learn From It

Jane’s sister destroyed many of her letters deemed ‘personal’ and those which survive have been described as ‘mundane.’ Lucy Worsley disagrees and finds delight in the trivia. She says, ‘...her personality is there, bold as brass, bursting with life, buoyant or recalcitrant as each day required. These letters are a treasure trove hiding in plain sight.’ I was also fascinated to realise Jane knew her letters could be read aloud, often over breakfast, so used a code known to her sister to ensure discretion. 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 I enjoyed Shakespeare when I was in school; I am not a fan of prequels. The wording 'fair Rosaline' implies… that started with Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. My friend Laurel Ann Nattress of Austenprose.com writes that… A new biography focusing on the domestic life of Jane Austen by historian and curator Lucy Worsley. Lucy Worsley takes into consideration the most recent scholarship on Austen and draws conclusions from examining private papers to attempt to flesh out the mere facts known about Jane Austen's life.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. The heroine of any story, George Austen’s daughter Jane would write, really ought to ‘have the misfortune, as many heroines have had before her, of losing her Parents when she was very young’. This was true in real life of Jane’s father, both of whose own parents had died before he was nine. Indeed, his story was even more traumatic than that.