A fresh approach to building the life of Jane Austen through her letters, demonstrating that a well-known life can be reframed by being grounded in evidence of that life
The Life of the Author: Jane Austen takes readers on a literary-biographical journey through Austen''s life in letters. Using a unique non-linear approach, author Catherine Delafield explores three frames for Austen''s literary life-family, correspondents, and fiction-to suggest new pathways for the interpretation of life writing about one of the most popular and influential English novelists of all time. Delafield addresses multiple aspects of Austen''s epistolary practice and the ways in which her letters, juvenile writings, and unpublished novels have been overlaid on both biography and fiction.
Throughout the text, special attention is paid to the changing view of women-s correspondence as personal record and to Cassandra Austen''s role as editor of her sister-s surviving letters. The b
