RANDOM JOTTINGS

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.

OK well I am going to stop now as otherwise I shall be transcribing huge chunks of this vastly entertaining book for your edification and delight and as there are so many Trivial Pursuit bits of information in it, this could last for ever (and that is not meant to be a disparaging sentence). 

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?

I am inserting a link to a post by Diana Birchall, who produced a sequel to Pride and Prejudice called Mrs Darcy's Dilemma, which I think is one of the best in this genre and read with great enjoyment and reviewed here.  The author has recently written on her own blog about the saturation of all things Austen and she also wonders whether enough is enough. Check out what she has to say here and also look at the pictures of her gorgeous cats.

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"….