Reading this fantastic book was a little like one of those dreams where you discover an extra room in your apartment. An entire book focused on Henry Austen, a man I’ve spent years thinking about and trying to imagine! Continue reading
Reading While Human
This week I read a wonderful essay titled “Reading Jane Eyre While Black” that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. Not only does it compare two of 19th -century England’s most fascinating writers — Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen — but it hits on many of the issues I’ve been thinking about lately. About authorial intent, and how there will always be something a little mysterious about it, even to the author. Also how as both readers and writers we bring our own biases, both the known and unknown, to the page.
Tyrese L. Coleman makes many interesting points along the way, but one key theme is how “Jane Eyre” has been ruined for her by Bronte’s depiction of Bertha Mason, whose craziness and evil is inextricably linked to her West Indian origins and implicit blackness. Continue reading
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On Writing and Resolution
Here’s an article I wrote for my alumna magazine about publishing a novel in midlife. I love the textured and slightly trippy illustration by Polly Becker. Fitting, too, since ladies of 1815 were expected to spend a lot of time sewing — a requirement that nearly drove my heroine, Rachel Katzman, mad with boredom.
Thank you, Barnard, for giving me a platform — also an education!
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Behold Me Immortal
In honor of the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death, a melancholy moment for anyone who wishes she’d managed to live a little longer and write a few more works, I am sharing her “Plan for a Novel, According to Hints From Various Quarters”:
SCENE to be in the Country, Heroine the Daughter of a Clergyman, one who after having lived much in the World had retired from it and settled in a Curacy, with a very small fortune of his own. — He, the most excellent Man that can be imagined, perfect in Character, Temper, and Manners — without the smallest drawback or peculiarity to prevent his being the most delightful companion to his Daughter from one year’s end to the other. — Heroine a faultless Character herself, — perfectly good, with much tenderness and sentiment, and not the least Wit Continue reading
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Jane Austen Abroad
This is very exciting…someone in Taiwan, Paris Shih, has reviewed The Jane Austen Project. Although Google Translate definitely has some shortcomings, I think she liked it.
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Jane Austen and Data
I feel like I have been thinking about this Jane Austen and data piece as long as I’ve been alive, though I realize that is not possible. So happy it’s finally published!
The Jane Austen Project: A Novel 