Alphabet Authors ~ A is for Austen

I found this idea on Simon's blog @ Stuck in a Book. He picks an author for each letter of the alphabet, sharing which of their books he's read, which I ones he owns, how he came across them etc.

I might not do it exactly as he does but I will try to get to all the letters of the alphabet over time.

My first author is probably clear to anyone who knows me even just a little. Of course, I could have picked Isabel Allende (of whom I read 5 books) or Margaret Atwood (4). I do like both of them and I will certainly read more of their books in future but I just have to go with Jane Austen.

Of course, I have read all of their books and own various copies of all of them. So no surprise there. You can see a picture of her covers, this time not in alphabetical but in chronological order. The same with the German editions:

If you are interested in my German reviews: here is a list of all her books that I read with the German titles included:

Austen, Jane (Jane Austen in German)
"Emma" - Emma - 1816 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)
"Mansfield Park" - Mansfield Park - 1814 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)
"Northanger Abbey" - Kloster Northanger - 1818 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen) 
"Persuasion" - Überredung/Anne Elliot - 1817 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen)
"Pride & Prejudice" - Stolz & Vorurteil - 1813 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen) 
"Sense & Sensibility" - Verstand & Gefühl/Sinn & Sinnlichkeit - 1811 (The Motherhood and Jane Austen) 

And since 2025 will be the 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen, the Classics Club has started a #ReadingAusten project here. We start with Sense & Sensibility.

And there are, of course, hundreds of books about Jane Austen, her life, her novels, plus numerous "sequels" to the novels she wrote, written by contemporary authors. I am not a big fan of those kind of stories, so I'm not including any since I haven't read them.

Austen, Jane
"Lady Susan" - Lady Susan - 1795
"The Watsons" - Die Watsons - 1803/05
"Sanditon" - Sanditon - 1817
"Selected Letters. 1796-1817" - 1796-1817

Le Faye, Deirdre "Jane Austen. The World of Her Novels" - Jane Austen und ihre Zeit - 2002

Pool, Daniel "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew" - 1993
Rowlatt, Bee & Witwit, May "Talking About Jane Austen in Baghdad. The True Story of an Unlikely Friendship" - 2010
Shields, Carol "Jane Austen. A Life" - 2001
Tomalin, Claire "Jane Austen - A Life" - 1997

How did I come across this fantastic author? I only started reading her novels when I moved to England in 1994 and began reading books in English. I started with a few easy reads, children's books that I read with my boys and easy reads, quick chick-lit types first but found pretty fast that I preferred the classics, Louisa May Alcott was one of the authors that eased the way from the children's books to adult ones. And if you read one English classic, Jane Austen is not very far.

The saddest part of having Jane Austen as one of your favourite authors is that she didn't live long enough to write more then the six novels she finished (plus a few that she started).

Facts about Jane Austen:
Born    16 December 1775 Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, England
Died    18 July 1817 (aged 41) Winchester, Hampshire, England
Buried in Winchester Cathedral
She appears on the £10 note of the Bank of England.
They unveiled a statue in Basingstoke, England in 2017 on the occastion of the 200th anniversary of her death.
A Jane Austen festival takes place in Bath every year in September.
You can visit the cottage in Hampshire (Jane Austen's House), where Jane Austen lived most of ther life. It is now a museum.

Most of her novels portray the women of her time, mainly those who depended on a "good marriage" in order not to starve to death. You can tell she knows a thing or two about that situation. She had a great sense of humour and her novels are full of ironic comments.

Her father was a rector and she had seven siblings.

Her books were made into several films and television series, all of them interesting and worth watching. But my favourites are:

1. "Persuasion" w. Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds - 1995
2. "Pride & Prejudice" w. and Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth - 1995
3. "Sense & Sensibility" w. Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman - 1995
4. "Emma" w. Doran Goodwin and John Carson - 1972
5. "Mansfield Park" w. Frances O'Connor and Jonny Lee Miller - 1999
6. Since I'm not a huge fan of "Northanger Abbey", there isn't really a version I like much but if I had to choose, I'd probably take the version from 1987, not because of Katharine Schlesinger or Peter Firth but because of Robert Hardy who was great in any role.

And one last bit of information:
The actress Anna Chancellor is a descendant of Jane's brother Edward Austen. Jane is Anna’s eight-times great aunt. There are similarities in the drawings and pictures and the descriptions, so, if we want to know what Jane looked like, see here and here. Maybe we can imagine Anna Chancellor who also acted in my favourite "Pride & Prejudice", she is Mr. Bingley's sister Caroline.

Also, you can take a quiz and find out which Austen heroine you would be. I am Elinor Dashwood.

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This is part of an ongoing series where I will write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.