I finally finished this book, having found the last half a trial to get through.
The first half engaged me more. I admire Devoney Looser for her abilitI finally finished this book, having found the last half a trial to get through.
The first half engaged me more. I admire Devoney Looser for her ability to really dig in on the research, and turn up all kinds of quirky and interesting (or "wild") factoids. I also rolled my eyes hard at some of the conclusions she tossed off, mostly interpretations of various bits of Jane Austen's novels that seemed unsupported and even just dead wrong.
For example, in Northangr Abbey, when Catherine begs Isabella not to tell her what is behind the black veil in Mysteries of Udopho, Looser says, "We could interpret this line, wild to know yet not wanting to be told, as pointing to Catherine's desire to remain in a make-believe world. But we ould also interpret it as her admirably stubborn (and rather unfeminine) desire to learn on her own."
Which reads to me as a rather breathless, pearl-clutching way of saying, "Catherine didn't want spoilers."
Looser later quotes a portion of Austen's decidedly tongue-in-cheek ending for Northanger Abbey : "It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own." But then Looser goes on to say, "As this conditional statement must lead us to conclude, although Austen's wild imagination is not an everyday sort of wild, it's wild in the pages of a novel."
Um, no, I don't see that conclusion at all. First of all, Northanger Abbey is no more "wild" than Jane Austen was, from what little we know of her life. She's being sarcastic here! Not wild!
There are other instances where Looser's attempt to hang "wildness" on Austen herself, or on her fictions, strain incredulity in order to keep the word squarely before the reader's eye. So rigorous is this determination that I began to flinch a little each time a new "wild" cropped up
So it took me a long time to finish the book. In conclusion, good points for me: diligent research, and some interesting early chapters. The last half could have been chopped as I have zero interest in tracking down Jane Austen erotic fanfiction (and there's tons more of it than Looser seems aware), nor in Austen films that never got made, or in obscure books that make up facts about Austen with zero support, or in a long list of famous people who loathed or loved Jane Austen's work. But those items might entertain another reader, and read less like they were there to pad out a text to book length, when it just as well could have been a lengthy paper for JSTOR....more
The title, the reader soon learns, is literal. The author explains why she decided to assemble a shelf of Jane Austen’s books—that is, the ones, writtThe title, the reader soon learns, is literal. The author explains why she decided to assemble a shelf of Jane Austen’s books—that is, the ones, written by women, that Austen read and mentioned in her letters.
The Jane Austen fan, or reader of Enlightenment Era books is aware that Austen undoubtedly read a lot more than we see named in the letters, which are a fraction of those she wrote. There is no mention of Aphra Behn, or Mary Davys, or even Eliza Heywood, whose great popularity a generation before Austen was born surely meant that her books were to be found in any library that included novels. But these are the names culled from the letters that Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra left for us.
In this book, Romney sets out to acquaint herself with not only the works of these female authors, but with the writers themselves. Most of these authors I’ve already encountered, but I find it fun to read others’ takes on their work. And I really enjoy a literary exploration that brings in the writer’s own experiences and perspective.
Romney is a rare book dealer, which shapes the structure of this book; though I did skim past descriptions of searches for specific copies, and the deets of auctions, as I have never had the discretionary income to spend on rare books, I comprehend cathexis, and agree that some of the satisfaction of reading a physical book is the feel of the book, the font, the illos—and the commentary inside from long-gone owners of the copy. Plus one’s memories of when one first encountered the book, and the emotions evoked by picking up that copy once again. I own a first edition of Chesterfield’s Letters. The pages were uncut, which meant it sat untouched on someone’s shelf for over two hundred years. It might be worth something, it might not. But I would have cherished it far more had this copy been worn from much reading, perhaps with notes and comments from Enlightenment-era or Victorian-era or even early twentieth century previous owners.
So once I skimmed past the auction parts of Romney’s searches, I really enjoyed her description of the physical books. The feel of them in her hands. Her delight in discovering writing on flyleaves.
Another aspect of this book that I relished was Romney’s awareness of the human being behind the printed pages. She gives the reader a quick and sympathetic history of each woman, even of Hannah More, whose work Romney finally gave up on. (Um, yes, so did I. If only there had been even a glimmer of humor…) This book is filled with insights, and also questions. Even when I disagree with Romney’s conclusions, I can see where she’s coming from—and can imagine sitting around a comfortable tea room, exchanging ideas.
She begins with Ann Radcliffe, whose work I don’t like any more than I like Hannah More’s, though for different reasons. I don’t care for Gothick suspense, and the thread of anti-Catholicism running through Radcliffe’s books doesn’t make it worth reading for the elegiac landscape descriptions, much less the creepy horrors and grues. But I appreciated Romney’s digging into the reviews of Radcliff’s books written in her lifetime, and I followed with interest Romney’s detective work tracing the gradual disappearance of Radcliff from popularity, to her present near-obscurity. Romney goes into the “explained supernatural” (in other words, all the supposed supernatural encounters in the books turn out to have rational explanations—unlike Horry Walpole’s ridiculous and flagrantly male-gazey The Castle of Otranto). Romney points out that in keeping her books firmly within the explained supernatural, Radcliffe was bringing logic to an emotional argument. She then traces through reviews and news reports about Radcliffe the false claims that Radcliffe stopped writing because she had sunk into madness.
In exploring this idea, Romney brings forth the seldom-acknowledged point that Catherine Morland, the teenage heroine of Northanger Abbey, who is so delighted by her discovery of Gothic novels that she brings the “emotional logic” of Gothics to imagining Mrs. Tilney being locked up before her death, learns from her mistakes, which are made in the ignorance of youth. Unlike General Tilney and his own quite Gothic, and ridiculous, assumptions about Catherine. He, an experienced man of middle years, has no excuse!
In wrestling with Hannah More’s determination that human beings are morally obliged to stay in their place (that includes women being subordinate to men), Romney states: “I found myself sitting for ten minutes at a time with a Hannah More biography in my lap, staring at nothing. This, too, is a part of reading. What we feel when we read does not remain on the page. We take it with us. We absorb it. It doesn’t have to change us, exactly (though it can, but it does affect us. It becomes a part of all the little moments that make up our lives.”
It's insights like this one, strewn through the book, that made it such a delicious read, as she goes on to give similar attention to Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Inchbald, Maria Edgeworth, and Hester Thrale Piozzi. And then traces how and why these women, once so famous, fell out of favor.
Did I agree with everything Romney brings up? No. She calls the unctuous, freckled Mrs. Clay from Persuasion a fraud, which I think is disingenuous; it’s true that Jane Austen’s narrator despises Mrs. Clay, but her situation, and her behavior at crucial points, isn’t a whole lot different from that of Mrs. Smith, who is better born, and who the narrator favors.
And again, Romney, in mentioning Mansfield Park seems to regard Fanny Price as humorless (wrong), and professes not to understand why Fanny disapproves of Inchbald’s play being mounted by the young people. She doesn’t seem to distinguish that it’s not the play Fanny objects to, it’s the flagrant disrespect for the missing Bertram paterfamilias—a disrespect that all the others are quite aware of when Sir Thomas comes unexpectedly home. But I blather at length about that in my review here on Goodreads.
And from specific instances to general points, Romney maintains that several of these authors’ books are great literature, and deserve rediscovery. This of course goes straight into subjective territory. My own feeling is that there are indeed terrific moments in all of these books, and one can see how they influenced Austen, but (to generalize drastically) they share one fault: unexamined tropes, or downright cliches, both in plot and in language. Whereas Austen was side-eyeing these tropes, and the threadbare figurative language common to all these writers (such as blazing eyes, and frequent faintings, etc etc), and either playing with the expectations or abjuring them altogether. Which is what elevates Austen from really entertaining writer to genius. But again, highly subjective.
My point is, even when Romney and I come to different conclusions, I enjoyed her description of how she got there, and why. I enjoyed this book to such an extent that I plan to buy a print copy once it comes out, and to recommend it to my face-to-face Jane Austen Discussion Group. We should have a blast exploring all its ideas....more
For an excellent, in-depth review Goodreads reviewer Grace Tjan does a much better job than I would, hampered as I am by how few of Yong/Cha's works hFor an excellent, in-depth review Goodreads reviewer Grace Tjan does a much better job than I would, hampered as I am by how few of Yong/Cha's works have been translated into English.
An American without reading-level Mandarin trying to delve into the long history of wuxia and xianxia is very much like trying to view a panorama through a keyhole. This book was fascinating on so many levels, though it was slow going. It has the structure of a dissertation, with long, jargon-laden sentences, and some very peculiar neologisms (like "narratorial" instead of "narrative") but I found it worth working my way through it slowly over a period of weeks.
Impressions I came away with: Jin Yong had steeped himself in the wuxia tradition. From the one novel I've read translated, and several media interpretations of his work, I can see the bones of wuxia tradition in the highly picaresque nature of his stories. But also, it seems, he was quite conscious of using jianghu tales in order to comment on current events--something that could be quite dangerous during the volatile sixties and seventies in mainland China. But this, too, seems to be a characteristic of wuxia: the tales that lasted the longest contain oblique commentary on their times.
This book was also interesting in how it traced Yong's use of his publishing medium (basically a tabloid, one of many published in Hong Kong) to foster his work through commentary on it, and letters from fans (whether actual fans or sock puppetry). Hamm traces the beginnings of the literary and academic world, which has also undergone dramatic sea changes in China, as they begin to grapple with Yong's legacy. The only phenomenon I can think of to compare him with in American literary landscape is Stephen King....more
Worth the price of admission solely for first publication of a scrap of Claire Clairmont's scathingly bitter castigation of free love, written near thWorth the price of admission solely for first publication of a scrap of Claire Clairmont's scathingly bitter castigation of free love, written near the end of her long life, this is an entertaining and interesting look at what became the "Cockney School" of writers.
Equally interesting to me was the fact that Daisy Hay's thesis parallels that of Diana Glyer in her equally well-researched work on the Inklings: namely, that though this was the era when the romantic view of the Romantics presented the poets and writers as isolated spirits creating their works while alone in studies or garrets, they actually inspired and informed one another to a remarkable degree.
Hay tries to cover all those gathered around Leigh Hunt, though some (such as the Lambs) get short shrift. Her focus is mainly on the Shelley menage once Hunt's complicated life is established, and how the Shelleys and Byron orbited around one another after Claire Clairmont caused them to meet.
Hay does an excellent job of detailing the lives of the women in these circles, and the cost of the radical life the men proposed. While I think she glossed over the competitiveness between Byron and Shelley (that led directly to Shelley's early death), and skimmed the treatment of Polidori that famous ear Without A Summer, I liked how carefully she presented evidence for some of the more highly cathected incidents that have left scarce, or no, footprint. She then offers possible explanations, without assuming any are correct. I particularly liked her explanation of the mysterious Elena episode. That sounds so very Shelley.
I also liked her discussion of the inspiration for, and development of, Mary Shelley's most famous novel: she neither denies Shelley's involvement nor attributes the book entirely to him, as do more politicized writers engaging with this material. Working from the actual manuscript, on which Shelley's distinctive handwriting can be seen, she makes a case for how closely Mary and Shelley collaborated, though the primary work was hers--just as they collaborated on their journal.
Another grace note was her touching on these profoundly ignorant teenagers tramping all over Europe in the wake of Napoleonic devastation, without a real clue. Hay reminds the reader how very young they all were--before the age of 25, Mary Shelley had had numerous pregnancies, lost all but one of her children, and became a widow.
I also liked how she never lost sight of Claire Clairmont, bringing together all her various strands at the end, tied to Claire's long, hard life.
What you get here is Rodi summarizing three of Austen's novels while occasionally making pronouncements upon literature and Austen fans. UnfortunatelyWhat you get here is Rodi summarizing three of Austen's novels while occasionally making pronouncements upon literature and Austen fans. Unfortunately, I think most of these go astray: the fans he's making fun of aren't the readers of Austen (who aren't obsessed with Darcy's wet shirt; they know that Darcy never does anything so stupid as to take a dive in his lake while clothed), they're the Austen film fans, or they are fans of the sexy sequels and more modern-language-and-mores Regency romances, who are looking for romance, and not the social satire and comedy of manners that Austen actually wrote.
Likewise, his comments about Austen, for example, that P&P is the first romantic novel, go astray because he doesn't seem to have read well enough in the period to land those shots. P&P was not the first romantic novel by any means--most would probably say Pamela, but some would go even earlier.
That aside, he warms up with a relatively brief go at S&S, and then unleashes the salty hilarity with P&P. So many funny lines as he smacks his lips over the stupidities of Collins, and bows to the monstrous greatness of Lady Catherine de Bourgh! Though I think he misses the boat entirely with his sometimes funny but mostly one-note commentary about how stupid Jane is, without seeing Jane's place in the manners of the time, and also he doesn't seem to realize how innovative Charlotte Lucas was: a female character who got exactly what she wanted, and didn't have to pay for her temerity with a deathbed confession.
That is a warning for what is to come, a pretty much one-note rant through Mansfield Park about how great the Crawfords are, and how evil, noxious, and creepy-crawly Fanny is--while being an empty dress. I agree with Rodi that MP is problematical (I go on at length here about what I think is a magnificent failure), but we agree very little on why, especially as I think he shoots wide of the mark about literature of the period, and about Austen's intentions. That riff left me wishing for less rant and more funny....more
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