Jane Austen Reviews

I bought this book based on the review in the Jane Austen Regency World magazine – they were very favourable. Just by looking at the cover I should have known better.

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel – it’s very readable (unlike some of Fanny Burney’s work).

Here’s what’s on the back …

Maria Edgeworth’s sparkling satire about the Anglo-Irish family of an absentee landlord is also a landmark novel of morality and social realism.

The Absenteecentres around Lord and Lady Clonbrony, a couple more concerned with London society than their duties and responsibilities to those who live and work on their Irish estates. Recognising this negligence, their son Lord Colambre goes incognito to Ireland to observe the situation and trace the origins of his beloved cousin Grace. To put matters straight he finds a solution that will bring prosperity and contentment to every level of society, including his own family.

Although the time period and the phraseology is very similar to Austen, this novel lacks the sparkling wit and is very didactic – I occasionally felt I was being beaten over the head with the message.

But it is worth reading for the social history. Also I think it’s a good thing to read things Austen read and to realise how extraordinarliy talented she was (i.e in comparison with the predecessors).

 I’ve had this book in my ‘to be read’ pile for quite some time. I thought the Everything Austen Challenge would be a good opportunity to force me to read it.

At the moment I’m about a third of the way through and I have to admit that I like it. Edgeworth has none of Austen’s wit, but her phraseology is eerily similar. I will write a proper review later.

I’m giving up on this one. I made it to stage two, but I lack the motivation to continue.

I find the concept intriguing and I think it would be quite fun to do as a group.

If you’re extremely familiar with Pride and Prejudice then I recommend just reading the bits where you have to make decisions – Ms Webster paraphrases Pride and Prejudice, but if you’ve read the original why would you want to read a lesser version?

Next up Mansfield Park (the BBC adaptation).

I’m still here. At the moment I’m working my way through Lost in Austen by Emma Campbell Webster (and I’m up to Stage Three). I’ve also watched Mansfield Park and shall write some comments later.

I’ve has this book in my classics section ‘for this age’, but have never managed to get beyond the first few letters. This time, however, I managed to finish it. Mostly because I need to discuss it at my next Jane Austen meeting.

Here’s the blurb from the back

Written in secret, the manuscript copied for her publisher in disguised hand writing, Frances Burney’s first novel Evelina appeared anonymously in 1778.

It was a sequel to Caroline Evelyn, the novel burned by its author when she was fifteen; Evelina the apparently illegitimate daughter of vanished Caroline, happily enters a society much more dangerous than she realises.

Subtitled The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World the novel records in letters its young heroine’s encounters with society, both high and low, in London and at fashionable watering places.

The novel explores representation and performance, social mores and masks, in a world full of distractions, from overturned coaches to golden automata, from opera to malevolent monkeys. Evelina is also a ‘family romance’, and, as Margaret Anne Doody’s Introduction indicates, it is acutely observant of the social laws regarding power, authority and authorship, which the author herself had to subvert, at least in part, like her naive letter writing heroine.

I liked it. I think it conveys the social mores of the time in an accessible manner (did you know that at a ball you can’t reject one young man and then dance with another?). Also, unlike Austen, we get so see how the middle class live (the Branghtons). The Branghton sisters (Poll and Bid) reminded me of the Steele sisters in Sense and Sensibility. Lord Orville is the perfect here – he treats everyone with polite kindness.

I found the letter thing a bit frustrating – how could she possibly remember conversations so exactly? I don’t think this book is for a general audience, but if you’re a keen reader of Austen and want to read the novels she read, then I would definitely recommend Evelina.

Here are some links …

http://www.blogapenguinclassic.co.uk/site/pcReadReview.php5?review_id=76

(a review of Evelina)

http://librivox.org/evelina-by-fanny-burney/

(audio book)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Burney