Becoming Jane Austen - by Jon Spence (Paperback)

About the Book

Spence's new biography focuses its attention away from the wider literary and intellectual currents that informed Jane Austen's writing and instead concentrates on the immediate influences on her life and work. The book also forms the basis of a forthcoming film of the same title.

Book Synopsis

Jon Spence's fascinating biography of Jane Austen paints an intimate portrait of the much-loved novelist. Spence's meticulous research has, perhaps most notably, uncovered evidence that Austen and the charming young Irishman Tom Lefroy fell in love at the age of twenty and that the relationship inspired Pride and Prejudice, one of the most celebrated works of fiction ever written. Becoming Jane Austen gives the fullest account we have of the romance, which was more serious and more enduring than previously believed. Seeing this love story in the context of Jane Austen's whole life enables us to appreciate the profound effect the relationship had on her art and on subsequent choices that she made in her life.

Full of insight and with an attentive eye for detail, Spence explores Jane Austen's emotional attachments and the personal influences that shaped her as a novelist. His elegant narrative provides a point of entry into Jane Austen's world as she herself perceived and experienced it. It is a world familiar to us from her novels, but in Becoming Jane Austen, Austen herself is the heroine.

Review Quotes

"'It is the small incidents that Jon Spence puts under the microscope in his entertaining and sensitive biography.' 'Jon Spence is painstaking, delicate, full of insight - a somehow fitting, friendly biographer.' Joceline Bury, Jane Austen's Regency World Magazine" --Joceline Bury

"'Jon Spence's book has all the virtues of a well-researched and original study. Hard to write anything new about Jane Austen these days, but Spence, in his own quiet and unobtrusive way, has done it.' John Bayley" --John Bayley

"Becoming Jane Austen gives the fullest account we have of her falling in love with the charming young Irishman Tom Lefroy." --Lucy Whitson, Evening Express

""Fascinating...full of details that add color and texture to what we know of Austen." --The Record-Courier" --Mary Louise Ruehr

"Spence meticulously unpacks the evidence available to him...and lays the probablilities before us in writing that is charged with its own kind of electricity. His great achievement is that by the end of Becoming Jane Austen it is indeed possible to see how Jane became Jane Austen, the great writer of English literature." --Sydney Morning Herald

"mention in 'Books on Radio'" --The Bookseller

"A delightful book ... I have enjoyed it immensely." --John Bayley CBE, Writer and Literary Critic

"'Jon Spence's 'Becoming Jane Austen' is one of the best half-dozen books published on Austen in the last quarter century.' 'This is a book full of wisdom about [Jane Austen] and her art.' Joseph Wiesenfarth, JASNA News" --Joseph Wiesenfarth

"'Becoming Jane Austen' is a good, traditional biography. Clearly written, jargon-free and pleasant to read, it covers familiar ground without any sense of fatigue and makes the most of the material.' Peter Washington, The Literary Review" --Peter Washington

"'Jon Spence has given us the most cogent portrait of Jane Austen's literary life to date.' Julia Barrett, author of 'Presumption', 'The Third Sister' and 'Jane Austen's "Charlotte"', British Heritage Magazine" --Julia Barrett, British Heritage Magazine

"Title mentioned, April 2007" --Stephanie Cross, Observer

"This biography does uncover some interesting facts about the novelist's antecedents and family, showing them to be just as obsessed with fortune and gentility as the Dashwoods and the Bennets." --Tablet, The

About the Author

Jon Spence is an American and was educated at King's College, London University. He has lived abroad for many years and now divides his time between London and Sydney. He is the editor of A Century of Wills from Jane Austen's Family and Jane Austen's Brother Abroad: The Grand Tour Journals of Edward Austen. He acted as Historical Consultant on the film Becoming Jane.