- Category: Books » Biography & Autobiography » Literary
- Format: Hardcover Learn more about the Hardcover format using Tower WIKI.
- Publisher: Little Brown & Co
- ISBN: 1559703873
- WAPI (Tower ID): 101868097
- Release Date: April 28, 1997
- Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
- Tower.com Sales Rank: #855615 in Books (See Top 100 Books Bestsellers)
- #32209 in Biography & Autobiography (See Top 100 Biography & Autobiography Bestsellers)
- #1902 in Literary (See Top 100 Literary Bestsellers)
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Product DescriptionRun a Quick Search on "Jane Austen :Obstinate Heart" by Valerie Grosvenor Myer to Browse Related Products:Browse more products related to "Jane Austen :Obstinate Heart"Browse more products related to "Valerie Grosvenor Myer"Review"This concise new biography of Jane Austen offers a brisk recapitulation of the well-established details of her life, but makes no great claims to originality....This is a book whose chief merit is also its limitation, that it is safely familiar." "[S]ucceeds in capturing the texture of the novelist's life for the delectation of true Janeites....We're pulled into the everyday life that shaped the novels, the life of a shabbily genteel, fiercely intelligent woman who resented that shabbiness--and made no secret of her resentment--and used the intelligence to eventually transcend it." "The accomplishment of this biography is to place Austen squarely amid the squawk and isolation of eighteenth-century life." Publisher's noteAt the heart of Jane Austen's story lies a mystery: how a woman of "genteel poverty", the seventh child of a country clergyman, an unmarried spinster for whom life was often a struggle against the indignities of financial dependency, could have produced works of such magnificent warmth and wisdom. Valerie Grosvenor Myer's flawless research proves Austen's books grew from the preoccupations of her social set - respectability, financial security, and most of all, marriage. "It is a truth universally acknowledged", begins Pride and Prejudice, "that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife". In that one line are revealed the principal forces at work in Austen's novels - and in the world from which they were drawn. For many middle-class women of Austen's day, marriage was paradoxically the only method of achieving independence. Marriage could also be a life sentence. Myer shows that by many accounts Austen was pretty and flirtatious (though occasionally also sharp-tongued), and the object of at least two proposals, but obstinate in her refusal to marry for other than love. Her obstinacy condemned her to reliance on her family for financial support. As Myer points out, it also enabled Austen to write her immortal novels. Using letters, family memories, and of course the novels themselves, Myer provides a detailed and revealing look at Jane Austen - her relationship with her beloved sister Cassandra, her devotion to and pride in her brothers and their children (who remembered "Aunt Jane" with warm affection), and her independence of mind and spirit. Austen's fondest dream was to establish herself not as another "silly female novelist", but as a serious and self-supporting writer. She reveled in the reviews of those of the novels published - anonymously - during her brief lifetime. Yet as Myer shows, no one, least of all Austen herself, could have imagined her posthumous popularity. AnnotationA survey of Jane Austen's life and times, including the reason the novelist remained single, the changes she underwent from her youth to her middle age, and an examination of the problems of traveling in Georgian and Regency England. If You Enjoy "Jane Austen :Obstinate Heart (Hardcover)", May We Also Recommend:Customer Reviews for "Jane Austen :Obstinate Heart (Hardcover)" by Valerie Grosvenor Myer (Author...There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review! Literary Bestsellers
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