{"id":5786,"date":"2024-08-26T18:23:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=5786"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:40:13","slug":"freya-johnston-jane-austen-early-and-late","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2024\/08\/26\/freya-johnston-jane-austen-early-and-late\/","title":{"rendered":"Freya Johnston. Jane Austen, Early and Late.<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Freya Johnston. Jane Austen, Early and Late.<\/em><\/h1>\n\n
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Angelina Eimannsberger<\/a><\/div>\n\n
in <\/span>Book review<\/a>, <\/span>Reviews<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Freya Johnston. Jane Austen, Early and Late<\/em>. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. 296 pages. ISBN 9780691198002. US $39.95 (hardcover).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Freya Johnston\u2019s Jane Austen, Early and Late<\/em> questions how we imagine time passing in the lives of authors by asking what can be gained if we understand writing as something continually revised, returned to, and done in response to others. Drawing on both her extensive knowledge of Jane Austen\u2019s archives and research into the writer\u2019s family and literary history, Johnston reframes Austen\u2019s work by reading the author\u2019s juvenilia, short texts, and other so-called minor writing in conversation with her six major novels. Instead of establishing a clear hierarchy that progresses from more ephemeral writing to the well-known novels, Johnston treats all of Austen\u2019s writing as connected and essential to understanding this major figure of literary history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To re-situate literary criticism and readership of Austen\u2019s oeuvre, Jane Austen, Early and Late<\/em> examines Austen\u2019s \u201cfirst known works and their reception\u201d by focusing \u201con the dubious chronology of her compositions, her likely sources and influences, and her comic and stylistic repertoire, and on the relationship of her earliest known manuscript works to the later, celebrated novels\u201d (p. 17). Johnston\u2019s rejection of the traditional chronologies of biography is particularly important given that Austen\u2019s life was an unconventional one for a woman of her time: she was a successful novelist who lived without many of the familiar milestones of nineteenth-century women\u2019s lives, dying \u201cwithout having had children or grown old\u201d (p. 32). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book\u2019s first chapter, \u201cDeveloping,\u201d considers how Austen experienced the publishing of her work during her lifetime, and how we in turn receive her writings. The chapter asks: \u201cShould we even construe a career in such terms\u2014as moving from start to finish, from A to Z, when in truth many authors begin something, drop it, and return to it?\u201d (p. 42) To answer this overarching question, the chapter explores an undated chronology of Jane Austen\u2019s work by her sister Cassandra, though notes that this chronology, which omits \u201cdates of publication,\u201d obscures the \u201cdegrees of proximity or indeed overlap\u201d of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, <\/em>and Emma<\/em> (p. 59). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnston\u2019s next two chapters situate Austen within the broader literary context of her time. The second chapter, \u201cEffusions of Fancy,\u201d turns to Austen\u2019s juvenilia, examining her \u201ceffusions\u201d alongside the still-emergent genre of the novel. The effusion was a genre of short, light writing favored by women and often gathered into published collections. Johnston\u2019s third chapter, \u201cReading and Repeating,\u201d considers Austen\u2019s literary influences, such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift, and examines the changes in Austen\u2019s writing style that led to her becoming known as an author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting her circular rather than linear approach, Johnston turns to the end of Austen\u2019s life in the middle of her book. The fourth chapter, \u201cDying with Laughter,\u201d treats Austen\u2019s death and her comedic talent by analyzing her final piece of writing, a comic poem written at the end of her life. The chapter also considers the relatively well-known unfinished \u201cSanditon\u201d manuscript and finds in it a return to Austen\u2019s \u201cearlier hyperbolic mode\u201d (p. 155) but no signs of her declining powers as a writer, despite her failing health. Johnston concludes that \u201cin this, her last novel, Austen endorses her beginnings\u201d (p. 157).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fifth chapter, \u201cHistories,\u201d expands on Austen\u2019s relationship with both social and literary history by taking up another comedic text, \u201cThe History of England,\u201d which Johnston describes as \u201ca self-possessed rampage through the lives of thirteen monarchs across four centuries\u201d (p. 158). Written by Austen as a teenager, the work\u2019s playful engagement with the history of monarchs illustrates that she understood \u201chistory [as] the servant of fiction\u201d (p. 161). This chapter contains the only underdeveloped section of the book: Johnston\u2019s discussion of womanhood and slavery in Mansfield Park <\/em>and its historical context overlooks the social position of enslaved women and flattens the complex workings of Empire by stating that \u201c[a]ll of them are evil\u201d (p. 199). This vastly simplified statement might be true enough, but it is out of step with Jane Austen, Early and Late<\/em>\u2019s otherwise clear and precise analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the sixth chapter, \u201cThe Village and the Universe,\u201d asks why the relatively small plots of Austen\u2019s novels hold such tremendous appeal. Reflecting on retellings and why we love Austen so much, Johnston writes that Austen, \u201c[like Shakespeare] exhibits a strong consciousness that human lives, including those within her fictions, are at once confined by and something other than exemplary of the general truths they embody, or of the genres in which they appear\u201d (p. 214).  Johnston questions what we know about chronologies of authorship, life, and day-to-day literary production, and also sheds light on the often abrupt endings of Austen\u2019s novels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As one of the most celebrated British writers, Austen is easily eclipsed by hagiography for literary scholars, students, readers, and fans. This book provides a nuanced approach to her life and work, offering interesting new angles for reconsidering Austen and her writing. In a conclusion that offers a fresh perspective on the endings of Emma<\/em>, Persuasion<\/em>, <\/em>and Pride and Prejudice<\/em>, <\/em>Johnston suggests that these texts exemplify something about the lasting impact of Austen\u2019s work: the endings of these novels \u201cshow Austen\u2019s characters thinking and feeling their way into a new life [\u2026] These people and their stories do not end. They grow\u201d (p. 220).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Angelina Eimannsberger, University of Pennsylvania<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Freya Johnston\u2019s Jane Austen, Early and Late reframes Austen\u2019s work by reading the author\u2019s juvenilia, short texts, and other so-called minor writing in conversation with her six major novels. Instead of establishing a clear hierarchy that progresses from more ephemeral writing to the well-known novels, Johnston treats all of Austen\u2019s writing as connected and essential to understanding this major figure of literary history. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"wp-custom-template-post-template-reviews","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888,1887],"tags":[1896,1906,1963],"class_list":["post-5786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-reviews","tag-19th-century","tag-biography","tag-women"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5786"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5919,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5786\/revisions\/5919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}