Jane’s closest and dearest confidante in all this and throughout her life was Cassandra; together they lived, making and mending, at the edges of Georgian gentility, an environment which explains Austen’s fictional arrangement of some fantastic marriages and inheritances. But wishful thinking did not blind this author to the realities of lives more ordinary. She wrote directly from her own society and its times making, as Worsley writes, ‘the political into the personal’. Her first readers would have been familiar with her portraits, for example, of warfare at sea through her depictions of young William in Mansfield Park and of the older Captain Wentworth in Persuasion. This new telling of the story of Jane’s life shows us how and why she lived as she did, examining the places and spaces that mattered to her. It wasn’t all country houses and ballrooms, but a life that was often a painful struggle. Jane famously lived a ‘life without incident’, but with new research and insights Lucy Worsley reveals a passionate woman who fought for her freedom. A woman who far from being a lonely spinster in fact had at least five marriage prospects, but who in the end refused to settle for anything less than Mr Darcy. 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. First, thanks to Candi for bringing this to my attention. I am definitely a Jane Austen fan, but was always of the opinion that not much was known about her life because her sister Cassandra had burned many of her letters, at Jane's request. But in fact, a great deal is known about her because a great many letters survived, she had a large family interested in preserving her legacy, and her novels themselves contain many clues to her life and times. Loved this book! So easy to read and holds your interest from start to finish. I always watch her documentaries on tv also. She has a great way of getting things across.

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The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.

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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. Jane Austen at Home is divided into four major sections, titled as acts in a play. I thought this a lovely touch by Ms. Worsley, reminding readers of the Austen family’s love of amateur theatricals. “Act One: A Sunny Morning at the Rectory” covers Austen’s early life at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire (1775-1801). During this period, Jane traveled to relatives’ homes and even lived away at boarding schools for several years. Nonetheless, Steventon remained her place of safety until her father’s retirement forced Mr. and Mrs. Austen, along with Cassandra and Jane, to move to Bath. In appearance, Jane’s mother was striking rather than beautiful, with her dark hair, ‘fine well cut features, large grey eyes, and good eyebrows’. ‘She was amusingly particular about people’s noses,’ we’re told, ‘having a very aristocratic one herself.’18

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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. 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. But if you follow me this far in the idea that Jane was undermining the very moment where you’d expect marriage to be most praised, there could be an explanation. Remember that ‘double-voiced’ nature of Jane’s letters? The same applies to her novels. At first reading, these are stories about love and marriage and the conventional heterosexual happily-ever-after. Only at the second does a sneaky doubt perhaps creep in to suggest that maybe marriage is not the best thing that could ever happen to these women.” It is well known that Cassandra Austen - Jane's sister - destroyed some of her letters after her death to help create the picture of her which has been handed down through the generations. But there is enough evidence in the surviving letters to show that Jane's character was not all sweetness and light. She was someone who belonged to the more robust culture of the eighteenth century rather than the more mealy mouthed and buttoned up nineteenth century culture.

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But there were also other ways for a Georgian clergyman to supplement his income. As the Austens travelled into Steventon in 1768, the land and the fields around them were going to be just as important as the house. Steventon parish was three miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide.25 The living included the Rectory itself, and ‘glebe’ lands of three acres that were to be farmed specifically for the maintenance of the parish priest. In Steventon, the former common fields of the village had been ‘inclosed’ and made into private farms. This meant that George wouldn’t have to go through the arduous business of collecting his tithes in kind from each individual family. He would just take 10 per cent in money from the profits of his farmer neighbours. The fact that he collected his tithes directly, rather than via a landowner, was what made Mr Austen a rector rather than a plain parson. But the business of the tithes did mean that his fortunes were still very closely tied to those of the land. Both Worsley and Austin zoom in on the lives of British middle- and upper-class women. Men are discussed in relation to their controlling influence upon women. Feminism is not a new phenomenon! Women were writing and having their voices heard even before the turn of the 19th century. 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 | Kirkus Reviews

My favorite part of the book was the comment by Austen’s niece about her sitting quietly sewing and then bursting out laughing while thinking up a funny scene for her next novel! I can totally envision that happening. We can only suppose how perhaps the events of Jane’s own life are mirrored in her characters’ lives and the choices they make. Worsley draws numerous examples of where the events in the lives of Austen’s characters may be a rewriting of events in her own life. We can observe Jane’s dislike of her mother, but we do not come to understand why. When there is adequate information explaining underlying motives, the author speculates and explains step by step the conclusions she draws. I appreciate and feel comfortable with this methodology. What is known is presented. What is postulated is presented as such. Dr Lucy Worsley is the Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, covering Hampton court, the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, Banqueting Hall, Kew Palace and Hillsborough Castle. Worsley gets amazing behind the scene access to these properties and often tweets about the goings on. She is an insightful writer having recently released two childrens’ fiction books based on Katherine Howard and Queen Victoria and is also regularly seen on TV, including her latest series Six Wives.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.

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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. Highly recommended for Janeites. Now pardon me, but I need to go watch "Pride and Prejudice" for the thousandth time. 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. https://austenprose.com/2019/01/07/queen-victoria-twenty-four-days-that-changed-her-life-by-lucy-worsley-a-review/ But parsonages very often had a higgledy-piggledy, piecemeal appearance, and Deane was the same. Their limited funds meant that clergymen could usually only afford to add the odd new room or window, rather than investing in major improvements. George Austen and his fellow clergymen did, however, often feel a moral responsibility to maintain their houses at their own expense, if they could, because they held their properties in trust for their successors.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.