Re-presenting the Author: Biographical Re-Inventions of Jane Austen, 1871 - 2008

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I. 
 
PREFACE 
 
The trend of Austen appreciation and the interest exhibited in her show no sign of abating: 
books are published relentlessly, articles are uncountable, her works are continuously adapted into 
new films or mini-series and re-edited or re-published almost every year, prequels and sequels, as 
well as her novels, are enjoying a considerable reputation. The variety of materials we have about 
the English writer – from the most relevant to the most trivial ones – shows to what extent the 
interest in her is heterogeneous. Critics have by now agreed on the fact that she is a cultural 
phenomenon and that her exploding popularity has helped give birth and develop the so-called “cult 
of Jane Austen”, another complex cultural issue. Much has been written on this and it is not my 
intention to restate subjects which others have brilliantly touched upon. As a matter of fact, in 
recent years many academics have tried to approach, in different works, the factors which come into 
action in the making of a myth out of Jane Austen.
1
 Criticism has by now placed Austen in relation 
to politics, feminism, sexuality, imperialism, the cinema, the postmodern and popular culture, thus 
producing different versions or interpretations of the author, which might sometimes collide or 
overlap.
2
  
                                                   
1
 On this subject see the most extensive contributions given by C. L. Johnson, “Austen Cults and Cultures”, in E. 
Copeland and J. McMaster (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (1997); D. S. Lynch (ed.), Janeites. 
Jane Austen’s Disciples and Devotees (2000); J. Wiltshire, Recreating Jane Austen (2001). 
2
 For Austen and politics see the major works of M. Butler, Jane Austen and the War of Ideas (1975); R. Sales, Jane 
Austen and Representations of Regency England (1994); and C. L. Johnson, Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the 
Novel (1998). For Austen and feminist studies see S. M. Gilbert and S. Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. The 
Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979). For Austen and her cinematographic 
adaptations see L. Troost and S. Greenfield (eds.), Jane Austen in Hollywood (2001); S. Parill, Jane Austen on Films 
and Television. A Critical Study of the Adaptations (2002); G. MacDonald and A. F. MacDonald (eds.), Jane Austen 
on Screen (2003); S. R. Pucci and J. Thompson (eds.), Jane Austen & Co.: Remaking the Past in Contemporary 
Culture (2003) and D. Monaghan and A. Hudelet (eds.), The Cinematic Jane Austen: Essays on the Filmic Sensibility 
of the Novels (2009). For Austen and broader cultural studies see D. S. Lynch (ed.), Janeites: Jane Austen’s Disciples 
and Devotees (2000); John Wiltshire, Recreating Jane Austen (2001); K. Sutherland, Jane Austen’s Textual Lives
2 
If critics are nowadays looking for new directions in Austen studies, at the same time, the 
aim of this dissertation is to try and cover new ground, carrying out a comparative study of the 
different interpretations of the writer’s life, or lives – in this case. This task will be carried out 
through the close reading of some of her biographies and through the analysis of the most recent 
attempts made by film directors in bringing Austen home to us, in the literal sense, on the screen. 
The idea of approaching this topic grew thanks to my interest in Austen’s criticism, but especially 
during two international conferences, held in 2009, where I could gather ideas and stimuli for 
reflection.
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The growing interest in Austen and her writings has encouraged the publication of many 
biographies. In the last twenty-five years, about eight biographies have been written, each of them 
tackling the writer’s life from a seemingly different perspective and with a different approach.
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And, surely, others will be issued in the years to come.
5
 This trend is, however, very surprising, if 
we think that the only relevant material on which readers and critics can base their knowledge of 
Austen’s life, merely comprises about one hundred and sixty letters and more or less reliable family 
recollections. It is a well-known fact that, a few years before her death in 1845, her sister Cassandra 
took the trouble to burn and destroy the greatest part of the letters which were in her hands, along 
with – possibly – any diaries or memorandums Austen might have written.
6
 It is surprising, then, 
                                                                                                                                                                         
from Aeschylus to Bollywood (2005); C. Harman, Jane’s Fame. How Jane Austen Conquered the World (2009). For 
Austen and the Empire see E. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).  
3
 I refer especially to the international conference held last March in Bologna, “Unmasking Jane Austen – Austen 
Studies Today”, organised by the Centro Interdisciplinare di Studi Romantici of the Department of European 
Languages and Literature of the University of Bologna; and to the three-day conference, “New Direction in Austen 
Studies”, organised by the University of Southampton English Discipline, Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-
Century Studies and Chawton House Library, which took place last July, at Chawton. 
4
 In chronological order: P. Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life (1987); J. Fergus, Jane Austen. A Literary Life (1991); D. 
Nokes, Jane Austen. A Life (1997); C. Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life (1997); C. Shields, Jane Austen (2001); a second 
revised edition of D. Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record (2004); J. Spence, Becoming Jane Austen (2004) and a 
concise introduction to her life published by Oxford University Press: M. Butler, Jane Austen (2007). 2002 saw also 
the publication of a new edition of James E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family 
Recollections, edited by K. Sutherland. 
5
 Professor Peter Sabor is currently undertaking the project of on a new biography, to be published with Blackwell. See 
his personal page: http://www.mcgill.ca/english/staff/sabor/ (21/02/2010). 
6
 C. Austen, “My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir”, in K. Sutherland (ed.), A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family 
Recollections, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2002, p. 174.
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how biographers have been able to build a whole life out of “lopt & cropt”
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 material. As I will argue 
later, this lack of documents and a certain personal obscurity stimulated the interpretative impulse 
of biographers. If we can take for granted the premise that “biographies are built from 
interpretations rather more than from facts”,
8
 it is no doubt, then, that every person trying to 
articulate raw data into a life is primarily working on inferences and assumptions. Factual 
biography is a rather impossible concept.  
In the sections to come, I will firstly tackle the issue of the cult of Jane Austen, describing 
how, over a century, the typology of interest in her, took two different directions. Secondly, I will 
devote a brief section to the history of biography, focussing especially on its developments and 
outcomes in the last two centuries; after that, I will try to outline the problems posed by life writing 
to biographers, and describe the techniques they devise in case of lack of information, in order to 
provide a cohesive and coherent alternative or hypothesis. In my analysis, the extensive 
contributions on literary biography by Hermione Lee, Catherine N. Parke, David Ellis, N. Hamilton, 
Peter France and William St. Clair have proved very useful.
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In the main part of the dissertation, I will carry out a comparative study of the most recent 
biographies on Austen: namely Park Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life (1987), Jan Fergus, Jane 
Austen: a Literary Life (1991), David Nokes, Jane Austen. A Life (1997), Claire Tomalin, Jane 
Austen: A Life (1997) and Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record (2004, 2
nd
 ed.), always 
keeping an eye on the earliest records in our possession: James E. Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane 
Austen (1871), and other family recollections,
10
 which influenced all subsequent receptions of 
                                                   
7
 J. Austen, Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. D. Le Faye, 3
rd
 ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 1995, p. 202. 
The expression can be found in a letter to her sister Cassandra, dated 29 January 1813. 
8
 K. Sutherland, “Jane Austen’s Life and Letters”, in C. L. Johnson and C. Tuite (eds.), A Companion to Jane Austen, 
Wiley-Blackwell, Malden 2009, p. 25. 
9
 I refer to D. Ellis, Literary Lives: Biography and the Search for Understanding (2000); C. N. Park, Biography: 
Writing Lives (2002); P. France and W. St. Clair (eds.), Mapping Lives: the Uses of Biography (2002), N. Hamilton, 
Biography: A Brief History (2007) and to H. Lee, Body Parts: Essays in Life Writing (2005). 
10
 I refer to Henry Austen’s Biographical Notice of the Author (1818), Henry Austen’s Memoir of Miss Austen (1833), 
Anna Lefroy’s Recollections of Aunt Jane (1864) and Caroline Austen’s My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir (1867). All 
these records are now available in the recent volume edited by Kathryn Sutherland for Oxford University Press: J. E. 
Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New 
York 2002.
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Austen. By focussing on the most turbulent years of her life – about which we either have little or 
no material at all – I will try to explain how biographers coped with the shortage of information and 
thus reached different interpretations. I will mainly take into consideration Jane Austen’s removal 
from Steventon in 1801; the period from 1801 to 1809 that she spent in Bath and travelling across 
the South of England; and all the possible romantic involvements on which biographers have 
largely speculated. At this stage, the critical essays and contributions by Kathryn Sutherland, John 
Wiltshire, Deidre Le Faye and Claire Harman have proved most valuable.
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The final chapter, then, will be dedicated to the analysis of recent attempts at transposing 
Jane Austen’s life to the screen. Her life has been reinterpreted, or re-told, in two recent 
biographical films: Becoming Jane Austen (2007), written by Kevin Hood and Sarah Williams, and 
directed by Julian Jarrold; and Miss Austen Regrets (2009), written by Gwyneth Hughes and 
directed by Jeremy Lovering. The first is loosely based on the author’s life before becoming a 
published writer and the second concentrates exclusively on the mature Austen, up to the moment 
of her death. 
The close reading of biographies and the analysis of films will bring readers back to the 
different perceptions of the writer’s life: from the scholarly point of view to the broader popular 
culture. It will my aim to outline the approaches that biographers have adopted in order to re-
interpret and re-invent Jane Austen’s life. In fact, we will see that contemporary life-writers feature 
some shared strategies in the shaping of the biographical text. Finally, we will investigate in which 
way all the different interpretations of the life of a novelist can coexist and influence readers.  
 
                                                   
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 I refer in particular to J. Wiltshire, Recreating Jane Austen (2001); K. Sutherland, Jane Austen’s Textual Lives from 
Aeschylus to Bollywood (2005); D. Le Faye, “Memoirs and Biographies” in J. Todd (ed.), Jane Austen in Context 
(2005) and C. Harman, Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World (2009).