Real Jane Austen (Byrne) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Vividly persuasive…. The Real Jane Austen is excellent… particularly on the dissonant topics of theater and slavery….Byrnes section on slavery is better still, establishing links between Austen’s protagonists and contemporary figures, her pointed references and contemporary events, which highlight her supposedly oblivious fiction’s sharp views on the slave trade.
New York Times Book Review


Byrne takes Austen seriously as a writer...[she] brings to life a woman of “wonderful exuberance and self-confidence,” of “firm opinions and strong passions.” Little wonder that every other man she meets seems to fall in love with her.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post


Magnificent…explodes the old view of Jane Austen. Byrne’s research is wide, deep and meticulous…a more vivid and memorable Jane Austen emerges than a relentlessly "straight" old-fashioned narrative could deliver.
Times Literary Supplement (UK)


[Byrne] breathes yet more life into Austen and her works by considering the objects that populated her days…. [The] thematic approach offers a revealing picture of Austen and a lively social history….paints a fresh and vivid picture of an inimitable woman.
Economist


Biographer Paula Byrne has taken objects from Jane Austen’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.
Maureen Corrigan - NPR


A vivacious new portrait.... [E]ach chapter unfolds from the biographer's description of a small object associated with Austen's life.... Byrne's Austen, as revealed through this archive of objects, emerges as a worldly woman, profoundly enmeshed in a wider world than she's often acknowledged to occupy.
Publishers Weekly


Byrne begins each essay in this collection with an image and description of an object of particular importance to Austen...[and] how these items influenced her life and informed her work. This premise is stretched thin at some points...but it is an engaging narrative technique.... Austen intentionally drew inspiration from life in order to add what was at that time an innovative realism and verisimilitude to her novels. —Megan Hodge, Chesterfield Cty. P.L., Richmond
Library Journal


For Austen obsessives, this latest study offers a few flashes of revelation amid long stretches of minutiae.... Ultimately, all of this accumulation of detail doesn't bring readers much closer to a woman the author admits was "a very private person" and "the most elusive of all writers with the exception of Shakespeare."
Kirkus Reviews