The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things
&#8220;[Byrne] breathes yet more life into Austen and her works by considering the objects that populated her days&#8230;. [The] thematic approach offers a revealing picture of Austen and a lively social history&#8230;.paints a fresh and vivid picture of an inimitable woman.&#8221; (The Economist)&#8220;Byrne&#8217;s aim is to show how these objects, many of them reproduced in her book in lush color plates, reveal a much more cosmopolitan awareness of the world than is commonly credited to Austen.&#8221; (Maureen Corrigan, NPR)&#8220;A vivacious portrait&#8230;Byrne&#8217;s Austen emerges as a worldly woman, profoundly enmeshed in a wider world than she&#8217;s often acknowledged to occupy. This is an Austen with a sense for the political as well as for the finer points of sensibility.&#8221; (Publishers Weekly)&#8220;An excellent new biography&#8230;well-researched and entertaining&#8230;Byrne gives us a Jane Austen many readers may not recognize: a woman who enjoyed black humor and was well aware of the political scene of her time.&#8221; (Bookreporter.com)&#8220;Vividly persuasive&#8230;. The Real Jane Austen is excellent&#8230; particularly on the dissonant topics of theater and slavery&#8230;.Byrnes section on slavery is better still, establishing links between Austen&#8217;s protagonists and contemporary figures, her pointed references and contemporary events, which highlight her supposedly oblivious fiction&#8217;s sharp views on the slave trade.&#8221; (New York Times Book Review)&#8220;In THE REAL JANE AUSTEN, Bryne&#8217;s engaging prose and thoughtful, determined analysis of tangible objects from her life give us a picture of Austen as a vivid, vital woman committed to her career as a novelist, clear-eyed and part of the wider world. Well worth a read.&#8221; (Literary Omnivore)&#8220;Biographer Paula Byrne has taken objects from Jane Austen&#8217;s real life and times and used them as if we were dropping in on Austen on any given day...a dynamic new biography in which Austen lives and breathes.&#8221; (NPR/All Things Considered)&#8220;Byrne takes Austen seriously as a writer...[she] brings to life a woman of &#8220;wonderful exuberance and self-confidence,&#8221; of &#8220;firm opinions and strong passions.&#8221; Little wonder that every other man she meets seems to fall in love with her.&#8221; (Michael Dirda, Washington Post)&#8220;A fresh behind-the-scenes look at an author who, for many, stands behind only Shakespeare as the greatest English writer.&#8221; (Shelf Awareness)&#8220;Brilliantly illuminating&#8230;riveting&#8230;Again and again&#8230;Byrne opens out Austen&#8217;s story with a novelist&#8217;s persistent probing of the evidence.&#8221; (Simon Callow, The Guardian)&#8220;Magnificent&#8230;explodes the old view of Jane Austen. Byrne&#8217;s research is wide, deep and meticulous&#8230;a more vivid and memorable Jane Austen emerges than a relentlessly &#8216;straight&#8217; old-fashioned narrative could deliver.&#8221; (Times Literary Supplement (London))