The Real Jane Austen
A Life in Small Things
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Narrated by:
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Kate Reading
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By:
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Paula Byrne
About this listen
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things offers a startlingly original look at the revered writer through a variety of key moments, scenes, and objects in her life and work. Going beyond previous traditional biographies which have traced Austen's daily life from Steventon to Bath to Chawton to Winchester, Paula Byrne's portrait - organized thematically and drawn from the most up-to-date scholarship and unexplored sources - explores the lives of Austen's extended family, friends, and acquaintances.
Through their absorbing stories, we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character. Byrne transports us to different worlds - the East Indies and revolutionary Paris - and different events - from a high-society scandal to a petty case of shoplifting, She follows Austen on her extensive travels, setting her in contexts both global and English, urban and rural, political and historical, social and domestic - wider perspectives of vital and still underestimated importance to her creative life.
Literary scholarship has revealed that letters and tokens in Austen’s novel’s often signal key turning points in the unfolding narrative. This groundbreaking biography explores Jane's own story following the same principle. As Byrne reveals, small things in the writer's world - a scrap of paper, a simple gold chain, an ivory miniature, a bathing machine - hold significance in her emotional and artistic development.
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman deeply immersed in the world around her, yet far ahead of her time in her independence and ambition; to an author who was an astute commentator on human nature and the foibles of her own age. Rich and compelling, it is a fresh, insightful, and often surprising portrait of an artist and a vivid evocation of the complex world that shaped her.
Download the accompanying reference guide.©2013 Paula Byrne (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style."
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Enthralling, entertaining and brilliant
- By Uli Baer on 01-14-19
By: Caroline Weber
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Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know
- By: Colm Toibin
- Narrated by: Colm Toibin
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Elegant, profound, and riveting, Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know illuminates not only the complex relationships between three of the greatest writers in the English language and their fathers, but also illustrates the surprising ways these men surface in their work. Through these stories of fathers and sons, Tóibín recounts the resistance to English cultural domination, the birth of modern Irish cultural identity, and the extraordinary contributions of these complex and masterful authors.
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Eminently re-readable
- By Ellen-A on 01-02-19
By: Colm Toibin
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Georgette Heyer
- Biography of a Bestseller
- By: Jennifer Kloester
- Narrated by: Phyllida Nash
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international best seller, read and loved by four generations of readers and extolled by today's best-selling authors. Despite her enormous popularity, she never gave an interview or appeared in public. Georgette Heyer wrote her first novel, The Black Moth, when she was 17 in order to amuse her convalescent brother. It was published in 1921 to instant success, and 90 years later it has never been out of print.
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Heyer as a person
- By Jerri C on 06-15-15
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Louisa
- The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams
- By: Louisa Thomas
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of future president John Quincy Adams, whose life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. And yet John Quincy fell in love with her almost despite himself. Their often tempestuous but deeply close marriage lasted half a century.
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Insightful
- By Jean on 05-18-16
By: Louisa Thomas
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Those Wild Wyndhams
- Three Sisters at the Heart of Power
- By: Claudia Renton
- Narrated by: Claudia Renton
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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They were confidantes to British prime ministers, poets, writers, and artists, their lives entwined with the most celebrated and scandalous figures of the day, from Oscar Wilde to Henry James. They were the lovers of great men - or men of great prominence... They lived in a world of luxurious excess, a world of splendor at 44 Belgrave Square and later at the even more vast Clouds, the exquisite Wiltshire house on 4,000 acres, the "house of the age", designed in 1876 by the visionary architect Philip Webb - the model for Henry James' The Spoils of Poynton.
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SLOW START BUT STICK WITH THIS ONE
- By The Louligan on 01-22-19
By: Claudia Renton
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Marmee and Louisa
- The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
- By: Eve LaPlante
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa May Alcott's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee", Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her path.
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Hardworking women and the man they supported
- By Chris on 04-26-13
By: Eve LaPlante
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The Duchess
- By: Amanda Foreman
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 15 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774 Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying William Cavendish, fifth Duke of Devonshire, one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats. She became the queen of fashionable society and founder of the most important political salon of her time.
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Captivating Biography with Outstanding Narration
- By Johanna on 05-15-16
By: Amanda Foreman
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Melville in Love
- The Secret Life of Herman Melville and the Muse of Moby-Dick
- By: Michael Shelden
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Herman Melville's epic novel, Moby-Dick, was a spectacular failure when it was published in 1851, effectively ending its author's rise to literary fame. Because he was neglected by academics for so long, and because he made little effort to preserve his legacy, we know very little about Melville, and even less about what he called his "wicked book". Scholars still puzzle over what drove Melville to invent Captain Ahab's mad pursuit of the great white whale.
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intriguing
- By Jean on 06-18-16
By: Michael Shelden
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Queen Victoria's Mysterious Daughter
- A Biography of Princess Louise
- By: Lucinda Hawksley
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The secrets of Queen Victoria's sixth child, Princess Louise, may be destined to remain hidden forever. What was so dangerous about this artistic, tempestuous royal that her life has been documented more by rumor and gossip than hard facts? When Lucinda Hawksley started to investigate, often thwarted by inexplicable secrecy, she discovered a fascinating woman, modern before her time, whose story has been shielded for years from public view.
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Incredibly Frustrating
- By JayOne on 01-16-20
By: Lucinda Hawksley
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Zelda Fitzgerald
- The Tragic, Meticulously Researched Biography of the Jazz Age's High Priestess
- By: Sally Cline
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Zelda Fitzgerald was the mythical American Dream Girl of the Roaring Twenties who became, in the words of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the first American flapper." Their romance transformed a symbol of glamour and spectacle of the Jazz Age. When Zelda cracked up, not long after the stock market crash of 1929, Scott remained loyal to her through a nightmare of later breakdowns and final madness.
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The Beautiful and the Bungled
- By Silverthorne on 12-08-17
By: Sally Cline
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Fryderyk Chopin
- A Life and Times
- By: Dr. Alan Walker
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 23 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Based on 10 years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker's monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century. Walker's work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin.
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This book is a masterpiece
- By Carpe Diem on 02-09-19
By: Dr. Alan Walker
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What listeners say about The Real Jane Austen
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-27-17
A very enjoyable and personal biography
A long book, but still interesting. It brings a unique and detail oriented view of Jane Austen and her life and writings.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Fio Zacha
- 08-20-23
A superb and very personal biography Jane Austen
This is a wonderful book: a biography of Jane Austen where each chapter takes as it’s starting point an item of Regency domestic life or experience, that Paul Byrne proceeds to work seamlessly into the fabric of Austen’s life. Beautifully read by Kate Reading. Highly recommended for Austenites and also for those discovering Austen for the first time.
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- Myrtle
- 12-01-15
Understanding what could have informeher writing
A lot of the biographies didn't make sense. Her writings are not at all uninformed of "the stormy sisterhood" of the passions as the Bronte (I think ) criticism states. This work follows logical and detailed paths to discover what in her life would have given her such depth of knowledge.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Frances K. Harville
- 06-10-20
I keep re-listening to it!
I didn't discover Jane Austen until just after college. She has become my favorite writer over the years. I've read several biographies, but this one is different. It's about her development as a writer and a human being, appropriately through the lens of small details, some of which we wouldn't ordinarily associate with her. It's the first book I've read about her that comes closest to making Austen's personality three-dimensional, brings her to life, so to speak. Every time I listen, I better understand the subtlety of her genius, especially in the context of the times in which she lived, and how they are reflected in her books. The Narrator, Kate Reading, is a familiar voice to me, having listened to the entire Pink Carnation series she narrated. I like her reading, and her tone is just right for the subject. As an English teacher, Austen reader, and literary analyst, I thoroughly recommend this book.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Eee
- 08-11-13
For fans of Austen, Regency England
Absolutely loved this book. The author weaves in historical events, places, objects, existing correspondence to/from/about Austen, and quotes from Austen's writing to give a fascinating view of Jane Austen and her world. It's well written and Kate Reading's narration is, as always, wonderful.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Conceptsalso
- 08-15-19
Reference Book...NOT for Pleasure Reading!
Very technical and boring...probably better in print, as an actual study guide then a real easy listening biography of Jane Austen. I had to return it...it was putting me to sleep. :( I needed a book to keep me awake!
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1 person found this helpful