Terrible Jane

I couldn't get a clear picture of this book in Costa and spent a few minutes thinking that I really should get a decent camera instead of the cheap and cheerful one which I have used for a few years now. Then I had a reality check and remembered that this is a reading blog and not a lifestyle blog and it's easy when you're blogging to get carried away with the whole presentation thing, don't you think?

This collection of essays edited by Susannah Carson about the pleasures of reading Jane Austen has absorbed me all week. In her charming essay The Radiance of Jane Austen Eudora Welty describes Austen as being blessed with 'fairy gifts' namely a genius for comedy and originality. In the wickedly titled Terrible Jane Amy Bloom revels in Austen's satire and laments that in her time her work was appreciated for all the wrong reasons by writers who 'were not fit to clean her muddy boots' and that she was forced to 'take seriously' the literary efforts of her nephews and nieces attempting to emulate their Aunt Jane.

I particularly liked Susanna Clark's argument that Austen wasn't a 'visual writer'. The bonnets, dresses, ballrooms and carriages belong to the world of film and television. Austen herself barely described these things, being more interested in the psyche of the character.

Alain de Botton describes Austen's novels as 'books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match' and E M Forster brilliantly argues that though Austen invoked greatness in her novels 'she cannot retain it any more than we can.' After completing Pride and Prejudice Austen visits the portrait galleries in London and searches for a painting of Elizabeth.

'I dare say she will be in yellow, she writes to Cassandra. But not in that nor in any colour could she find her.'

I really must read Deirdre LeFaye's collection of Austen's letters which has been languishing unread on my book shelf for well over a year now.