Jane Austen: A Life by Carol Shields

With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Carol Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years. In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventown to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from an award– winning novelist, Carol Shields’s magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.

I'm new to Jane Austen so I sought out this book to better understand this author. Carol Shields takes a close look for us at the little we know about Austen and shares her thoughts and findings in this little bio.

The first ‰ЫПbiographies‰Ыќ of Jane Austen I‰ЫЄve read, but already I‰ЫЄm chafed by the assumptions and dubious deductions. I have my own idea of what Austen was like from what I‰ЫЄve read so far, and I‰ЫЄm still working on perfecting it ‰ЫУ so yes I did learn a little.

The biography annoyed me because of the many assumptions Shields makes. Although she mentions that there is little information, most of which can‰ЫЄt be trusted as truth, she makes statements as though they are fact when I am sure they were deduced from her letters or family stories or other biographers‰ЫЄ guesses. Although I appreciate that a biographer must do what she must to present a readable story, I don‰ЫЄt appreciate a covert manipulation of the reader to believe the author was a certain kind of person, which I can‰ЫЄt believe she was.