Gentle Readers, ‘The Many Lovers of Jane Austen’, a television special hosted by Amanda Vickery, was aired in Great Britain just before Christmas. Frequent contributer Tony Grant, who lives in Wimbledon and is the blog author of London Calling, graciously sent in his review. Those who cannot watch the show might enjoy this BBC radio interview. During the last eight minutes, Amanda Vickery discusses ‘The Many Lovers of Jane Austen’ with Libbie Purvves. You will need to download aBBC iPlayer.
On Friday 23rd December at 9.30pm BBC 2 showed Amanda Vickery’s exploration of the world of Jane Austen.
Vickery filming The Many Lovers of Jane Austen
Amanda Vickery wanted to explore how and why generations of readers have been won over to Jane Austen by just six classic novels. She takes us from the JASNA annual conference at Fort Worth, Texas; to Althorpe House, the ancestral home of Princess Diana’s family; Chawton Cottage, where she lived the last years of her life; her tomb in Winchester Cathedral; Bath, where Jane Austen is revered and celebrated; the trenches of The First World War; Sotheby’s auction house in London, where a global bidding war ensues over a fragment of Jane Austen’s writing; to Hollywood and the silver screen, and tries to discover how Jane Austen became a national treasure.
Vickery among the stalls at JASNA Fort Worth
The programme starts with Amanda Vickery strolling around the multitudinous market stalls laid out within a vast arena in the conference centre at Fort Worth. There are country and western singers and hundreds of people dressed in Regency fashions supplied by a costume company doing a very brisk trade. This is what the conference appears to be about, trade and commerce, almost “rampant commercialisation,” as Amanda Vickery describes the scene. The spin-off culture and the merchandising of Jane Austen is very evident at the Fort Worth conference. Amanda Vickery is almost surprised to find that there are actually many committed readers of the novels present. There is a mixture of popular devotion and academic prestige.
Images of The Many Lovers of Jane Austen @Shanitsinha
Trade and commerce, this is what lies at the heart of America and what has made America. The great driving force that drives a nation appears to drive the American people response to all they encounter, including Jane Austen. This intense commercial activity could actually be their way; their only way, of saying they love Jane Austen. It’s their default reaction. I think commercialisation and art have a very close relationship. Art and literature are made and written but they also have to be sold and for writers to develop they need to make money. But the balance has to be kept. The piece of art or novel has to be paramount. All this spin-off culture of nick knacks, crafts and spin-off novels can be in danger of burying the original creation.
Google screen shot of "Jane Austen"
Amanda Vickery next moves to London and visits Sotheby’s, the auction house, where she attends the auction of a fragment of Jane Austen’s handwriting. It is an edited piece of The Watsons, one of her two uncompleted novels. Vickery handles the piece reverentially and reads it to us straight from Jane Austen’s very own handwriting. A great privilege for her and for us. She discusses the meaning of the fragment with the curator at Sothebys. It is the only piece of first draft written in Jane’s own hand still in existence. The words on the page are the first words that formed in her mind, which she then wrote on the paper – a very special document.
The Watson's manuscript with Jane's handwriting and edits
The Sotheby’s expert estimates a price of £ 300, 000 for the document. Amanda Vickery watches the auction taking place and we are there with her. The price soon goes past the £300,000 mark and continues on and upwards. It is eventually sold to the Bodleian Library in Oxford for a colossal, £850, 000. Nearly a million pounds. Everybody in the auction room is shocked and amazed. I could feel my heart thumping away just looking at the TV screen. Amanda looked flushed too. The document is a financial investment but in going to the Bodleian it will be displayed and used for academic and literary purposes. The importance to the Bodleain is obvious but it also means that it is kept here in the United Kingdom and remains a national treasure.
The Bodleian Library reading room. Image @The GuardianUK
So how did Jane Austen become a national treasure herself?
To start with her first readers were members of her own family. Jane would read to Cassandra, her sister, in their shared bedroom before the fireplace at Chawton. They would read, reread, act out scenes and discuss ideas together. Her brother, Henry, the banker, negotiated with publishers on her behalf. Professor John Mulllen suggests that Jane Austen wasn’t as private and shy as some make out. The statement of “By a lady,” on the title page of Sense and Sensibility, was not so much an attempt to be anonymous but to portray to the buyer of her book certain expectations. A novel,” by a lady,” suggested a certain plot arc; unmarried woman meets eligible bachelor, then courtship with certain misunderstandings occur, but all works out in the end and they marry. She was advertising a social and psychological drama of courtship. It was a commonplace deceit. Jane was aiming her novels at a certain readership. However there is little evidence and few clues about who first bought her novels. Lady Bessborough, a distant ancestor of Lady Diana Spencer, who lived at Althorpe, bought Sense and Sensibility, because she discusses the novel in letters to her friends. Austen’s novels would have been read out loud in the drawing rooms of the aristocracy as a sort of group event.”
Earl Spencer reading Jane Austen at Althorp. Image @BBC
Soon after Jane died in 1817 at the age of 41, her novels went out of print and for a few years and they were no longer sold. The Romanticism of the 1840’s epitomised by the Brontes with stories set on wild moors and characters with wild passions, became all the vogue. Emily Bronte thought that Jane Austen was in “denial about human psychology.” But if you really read Jane’s novels all the emotions and human frailty, the passions and the lusts, are quietly there beneath the surface not being broadcast loudly from some windswept moor. The Brontes for all their brilliance probably misread Austen because they were so caught up with their own wild passions. The emergence of circulating librarie,s however, saw her novels being reprinted. These libraries needed a vast source of material to fill their shelves, and writers who had gone out of fashion were brought back into fashion for new readers who had a great appetite for novels. As these became accessible to a broad swathe of society an increasing number of lower middle class people started to read her novels.
Yellow back version of Northanger Abbey
By the end of the 19th century Jane Austen got a boost through the development of the railway system throughout the British Isles. People on long journeys needed something to do so W.H.Smiths opened book shops and newspaper booths on the railway platforms. They published books that had been out of print and out of copyright because they could do this cheaply. Published in standard yellow covers, they became known as yellow backs. Jane Austen’s novels were one such series of yellow backs that were sold to travellers on long train journeys. They became popular again. In the late 1800’s, Persuasion became what we might term low price pulp fiction.
James Edward Austen Leigh
The real turning point in the success of Jane Austen was in 1870 when James Edward Austen Leigh wrote a biography of his relative’s life and so created the Jane Austen myth. Professor Kathryn Sutherland, talking to Amanda Vickery at Chawton Cottage, describes how the family took the only portrait they had of Jane, the rough sketch drawn by Cassandra and commissioned an artist to create a new, beautified copy of it so that they could publish it with James Austen Lee’s biography.
"Saint Jane"
There was very much a sense of the Austen family beginning to shape a view of Jane that they wanted the world to know. Amanda Vickery describes this mythical Jane as “Saint Jane.”
Amanda in Bath
These days, Bath, in Somerset, likes to think of itself as the spiritual heart of the Jane Austen culture. The fact that Hampshire, where she loved most of her life, has far more to do with Jane Austen appears to pass them by; perhaps more accurately, the Bathites would like us not to notice. Jane Austen used the setting of Bath in two of her novels, Persuasion and Northangar Abbey. In Persuasion especially Jane portrays the underclass side of Bath alongside the rich upper-class side. She herself was never reverential of Bath.
2008 Jane Austen Festival, Bath. Image @The Jane Austen Centre Online
Today Bath holds its festival once a year with balls and hundreds of people parading the streets in 18th century costumes. It is the home of the Jane Austen Centre positioned half way up the hill in Gay Street. But it appears to me that these are more attempts to create a tourist trade. They want the custom. Jane Austen herself did live in Bath for four years in various houses around the city, the family seemed to be forever on the move, but she was not particularly happy there. She felt that she had been torn from her dear Steventon in Hampshire by her parent’s sudden wish to retire and move to Bath to have a good time. Similar to the Fort Worth experience, Bath appears to be out to make money from Jane. Bath does create a world focus for Jane Austen and brings her to the attention of many. So it’s not all bad.
Jane Austen in the trenches of WWI. Image @BBC
In 1894 Sir George Saintsbury coined the term, Janeite. Rudyard Kipling was a renowned Janeite and so were other writers and academics.Rudyard Kipling wrote an article about a group of World War I soldiers in the trenches who read Jane Austen novels. Life in the trenches was horrific from more than one point of view. It wasn’t just the horrors of “going over the top,” but it also included boredom, filth, lack of clean water and the deafening sounds of artillery, shell shock,and just grinding fear. Soldiers required a reading material that could take them away from this hell on earth. Jane Austen became very popular amongst soldiers in the trenches because she took them back to a pleasant land, a good, a peaceful England of quiet gentle manners and drawing rooms. William Boyd Henderson writing a letter home describes how much he enjoyed reading Jane Austen’s Emma. Winston Churchill is renowned to have said, when he was ill with a fever, “antibiotics and Pride and Prejudice have cured me.” Rudyard Kipling is said to have read Jane Austen constantly after hearing of his son, Jack’s, death in the trenches of the First World War.
F. R. Leavis
After the First World War there was a great need for the civilising power of culture , the humanities and English Literature, to be part of the salving cure for damaged and bereft lives. F.R. Leavis, the great English Literature don at Downing College Cambridge was the driving force behind all analysis of English literature. The Professor of English literature at Downing College between the 1930’s and 1960, his was the dominant and dominating view that all others looked to. He talked about the great tradition and said there were only five great writers of the novel: D.H.Lawrence, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, George Elliot and the mother of them all, Jane Austen. Leavis’s view held dominant for decades and few could survive criticism of this view. Careers could be and were destroyed or limited if anybody went against him. Professor Janet Todd tells Amanda Vickery that Leavis thought English literature could save the world.
Female cast in Pride and Prejudice, 1940
In 1940 Hollywood took on Jane Austen when Pride and Prejudice with Lawrence Olivier and Greer Garson was produced. In the 1960’s the BBC produced a whole series of costume dramas portraying Jane Austen’s novels. In 1980, Pride and Prejudice was filmed again. Amanda Vickery says, ” It was as though Jane Austen was trapped in the Quallity Street tin.” It was a Laura Ashley version of Austen. This suggests that perhaps each generation gets the Austen they deserve. Each decade produces productions of Austen that reflect the age they are made in.
Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy
In 1995 came Andrew Davis’s wet t-shirt version with Colin Firth emerging from the lake at Pemberley, wet to the skin, pumping testosterone. A film for the young with hormones. There is lovely scene with Amanda Vickery taking the part of Elizabeth Bennett as Darcy/Firth emerges from the lake and Amanda gives Elizabeth Bennett’s lines in response to Darcy and the two films are cut together as though they are one. The 1995 film still appears to be the most popular version, even now in 2011, anyway it appeared to be so with the hordes of fans at The Forth Worth assemblage. Andrew Davies was the main guest speaker and he was very very popular. Do Janeites create a hysterical response like a form of Beatle mania? Well, perhaps not. They don’t throw their knickers at Andrew Davies; they just receive, rather cheekily, tiny black lace thongs in little black net bags provided with Willoughby’s phone number. Apparently Willoughby is sounding rather exhausted, if polite, on the phone these days!!
Andrew Davies. Image @The Telegraph
Dr Cheryl Kinney, a gynaecologist and the organiser of this year’s JASNA conference at Fort Worth, denies that the Willoughby knickers are a way of increasing the likelihood of sexually transmitted diseases so that she can make money curing people. The contemplation of this possibility makes Amanda Vickery laugh like a drain. Yes, we DO get the Austen we want.
We are left with a thought for the future: Austen has peaked in the west. Could China and Japan be the next stops perhaps?
Other reviews: These will give you more insights and images!
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Jane Austen's World 
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. I especially like how she dismissed JA hiding her work–a bow to Victorian sensibilities. It was nice revisiting the AGM as well.
This was very interesting. I always enjoy your posts; they’re so well researched and articulated.
Best wishes for a happy new year!
Gayle / S.C.Mema
Your posts are wonderful and I enjoy Amanda Vickery’s documentaries very much. It is a hard pill to swallow to think that Americans only have commercial intentions or only want to “buy or sell” Jane Austen. I rather think that there are a lot more Americans who treasure old editions of their Pride and Prejudice novel that they hold near and dear. They can’t go to her house in Chawton or to Winchester Cathedral where she was buried, or even walk in her footsteps and try to imagine what her thoughts/worries/hopes/dreams were. They can however buy a little trinket or new edition of her book and relive her stories over and over again in their own way. They see these remakes of her stories and want to be a small part of it somehow. I was lucky in that one of my dreams came true and I was able to go to England and walk in her footsteps, go to her house in Chawton and to her grave at Winchester and could feel the energy of her presence at every place I went to. I have always wanted to go to one of the JAS conventions to see what they were like, more for the conversation than for the commercialism. She is right too about All Jane Austen in Bath, it is that way too but people want to have a connection when they are in her territory, and unfortunately we can’t touch her manuscripts or her writing desk, but we can touch that book mark or feather pen. : )
Laurie I empathise with you completely. Happy New year..
Excellent post! But I agree with Laurie that Ms. Vickery may have misread America’s response to Austen. Intense commercial activity is not our only outlet. (850,000 pounds for a piece of handwriting, indeed!) I’m sure the Austenite tourist traps in England are every bit as tacky as their counterparts across the Atlantic. And if I had the resources, I’d be flinging my money around for genuine British Jane Austen merchandise (manufactured in China, of course). Happy New Year, all!
We Americans don’t love Jane Austen because we’ve found a way to commercialize her, but because she’s just that terrific author. The spin-offs, excepting the paranormal ones, are just a way to continue the terrific characters that she established and that we feel we must know what happened when she became Mistress of Pemberley and a mother. Did they stay was they were when they married? How were they different? Surely that had to be just a violently in love as they were in the beginning. The fact that we can have a mug with her picture (don’t want to linger on that as there’s been quite enough discussion on it lately) on it at our workplace or home just demonstrates our sincere love of her and her world as she saw it. England it experiencing its own form of commercialism because so many Americans are “Making the pilgrimage” to see the Austen sites, Including me. I buy books over there that I can’t get here, nonfiction books about places she visited or lived or even a nautical tome about her brothers. So please don’t buy into the idea that we’re all just susceptible to the commercialism that has followed her popularity this time around. We read Jane, some of us daily.
It was an excellent post, though. I just felt that it was inaccurate in the portrayal of American Janeites who join the Jane Austen Society of North America, JASNA, because there they can find equally devoted fans who anxiously await the next event in our areas. Most of that “commercialism” is each chapter of JASNA has to raise their own funds and this is accomplished by thinking up items that other Janeites would buy and then producing them.
“Most of that “commercialism” is each chapter of JASNA has to raise their own funds and this is accomplished by thinking up items that other Janeites would buy and then producing them.”
Great reasons to merchandise her. We don’t see that from this side of the Atlantic..
All the best,, Tony
Happy New Year.
Thanks for another interesting post! I believe Jane Austen probably already has many fans in China and Japan…I know the Brontes do. Perhaps we Americans are rather more vocal and rampant in our admiration. ;)
I hope to see this documentary soon…perhaps PBS will pick it up. I look forward to more informative posts in 2012…Happy New Year!
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012 VIC!
Thanks for all these beautiful photos and posts!
Best wishes!
Any complaint of “commercialism” leveled against American devotees of Jane Austen, from a country whose landed gentry have had to resort to opening their private homes to the public, for pecuniary purposes, should be laughed off the stage!
This is a country that makes millions upon millions of pounds from the “purveying” of mugs, pens, hats , etc.(all made in China), celebrating the marriage of Prince William to a “commoner”.
If Americans need any other reason to hold their heads high over this critisism, we should just ask ourselves the question that Julian Fellows posed, and answered in the first episode of Downton Abbey; where did the Earl of Granthan look for help, to save his estate? We are told that he, and many other titled, but impoverished, English aristocracy “, in the early nineteen hundreds, stooped to marrying American wives for their wealth and family fortunes!
There is an oft-quoted phrase from the Bible, “There is nothing new under the sun…” that seems apro pos here!
Barabra, you have just opened the argument out well beyond the treatment of just Jane Austen. I am in full agreement with you about English stately homes, but the fact is that those great pieces of architecture set within vast rolling landscapes have always need various forms of financial in put. They started with slavery and the ownership of slave plantations in the West Indies. All wealth, whoevre has got it, Americans British Chinese has obtained it through murky means. That is not the argument I was putting forward it is about the commercialisation of Jane Austen.
Mr. Grant:
Unlike your discussion of the “commenrcialisation of Jane Austen”, whose central character cannot be diminished by this treatment, nor one word of her work changed, surely your concern should also extend to the commercialism of the British Royal Family, British stately homes and, most outrageously, the Church of England and nearly every cathedral that one visits in the UK!
In these cases, the actual institution is being compromised and hollowed out by this “commercialisation”, which serves, only, to help pay the bills, and not to increase the influence and delight of the reading public.
Respectfully,
Barbara Kidder
By the way, a Happy New Year to you all.
Tony
Just a little in explanation about what we see from here. We all know Arthur Millers The Death of a Salesman, which appears to epitomise the whole concept of work in America to us. Then there is Andy Warhols soup cans. Art as consumer item, consumer item as art.The series we have had over here, Mad Men, seems to show American society and attitudes in the 50’s and 60’s.Sex in the City probably didn’t help. America to us here is all these things with MacDonalds KFC and Krispy Creams added on. I can tell, you are probably all laughing now, but that is what we see.
I have travelled on the West Coast and I have travelled on the East Coast and I love America. However we try to be honest about what we are here.too, really.
“We don’t see that from this side of the Atlantic…”
This was where you over-stated your case, Tony! The truth is, nowdays, we are all “in trade”!
A Happy New Year to you, too!
Barbara Kidder
I must weigh in on the discussion. Having attended more conferences than I can count, and having organized a number myself, I know that the costs, which are already prohibitive to participants, would spiral out of control without the participation of vendors who push their commercial products and sponsors who largely pay for the fancy receptions. The cost to the conference organizers? – commercial products or logos plastered everywhere.
I oversee a relatively modest annual adult literacy conference in Richmond. Even by keeping the costs for room, food, and workshop rooms as low as possible, this 2-day conference for 74 people costs our sponsor $14,000. Without the vendors, whose commercial products are peddled throughout the event, we would be left without conference bags, pens, and the gifts that make such an experience special for people who cannot afford to spend $1,200 to attend a national event.
In the instance of JASNA Fort Worth, I found it eminently practical of Victoria’s Secret (an underwear company that targets women) to sponsor gift bags that contained black panties and a note with Willoughby’s phone number. Such enterprise and wit is the stuff that America is made of and over which Jane Austen surely would have had a good laugh.
We as a nation might sometimes seem rough around the edges to others and a wee bit crass in our unabashed worship of free enterprise, but our Janeites’ eager interest in Jane Austen is serious and sincere.
This post is Tony’s take on the show, and his review is sprinkled with his opinions, which is his right. Having seen the show, my assessment was that Amanda Vickery gave a fair overview of the Fort Worth conference. I wish she had concentrated more on the academic side of the conference and less on the bonnets and memorabilia, but that was her choice.
Vic, I agree. I don’t think Vickery made Ft. Worth seem like a bastion of crass commerce; the AGM was rather affectionately treated. And for those still wondering, the entire film “The Many Lovers of Jane Austen” can be seen here. It takes a moment to download, but the link still works, I just checked it:
http://www.videozer.com/video/R5mHMAS?mid=56427
Well, I think we need to separate Tony’s review from the actual documentary – my first response to Tony’s post was to think that perhaps that is the way Vickery presented her case, and Tony and I have had several emails regarding this. But I have now seen the show and I find that while Vickery does emphasize the “commercialism” of the Fort Worth JASNA meeting and mentions little of the academic aspects of it, it is Tony’s picking up on this that is more his opinion than Vickery’s…. and the Fort Worth piece is only a few minutes long – but as it starts the show, it seems to hang out there as different from everything else that follows – I just disagree with Tony’s take on this as Vickery’s take on JASNA – it is his view, not the point of the show…
Vickery is presenting much about Austen’s popularity over the past 200 years – anyone who has read Claire Harman’s Jane’s Fame will find the same information – here Vickery offers short takes of the various academic and popular culture aspects of Austen – we start at Fort Worth, head off to Sotheby’s auction of The Watsons, then to Althorpe, the WWI trenches, the Bath experience [certainly far more commercial than any JASNA meeting I have gone to!], Chawton, Steventon, and the MOVIES, ending again with Forth Worth and Andrew Davies… it is a show that emphasizes the fun aspect of Austen, and hence the convention at Fort Worth is a prime example – this year more than ever because Andrew Davies was there, with this emphasis on the modern culture take on S&S. The fact that Victoria’s Secret gave to each attendee a very scanty thong with Willoughby’s phone number is a bi-product of finding fun in it all – and Victoria Secret was a wonderful sponsor and supporter of JASNA and should be thanked not criticized for their donations – the thong was only one small gift of many… [and even my husband thought this was all quite funny!]
I was at that conference, and what Vickery has chosen to focus on is the least of what goes on at these meetings – there was no mention of the day-long lectures and discussions – all 4 days of it! – you can get a sense of this by looking at the Table of Contents of the Persuasions On-Line that was just published on December 16 –
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol32no1/toc.html
some of these essays are from the conference – more will be published in the hardcopy of Persuasions in May 2012. One can see that much is offered at these JASNA conferences in the way of critical academic analysis and discussion as well as informative sessions on regency life and history – you need only look at the conference program to get an idea: http://www.jasna.org/agms/fortworth/index.html
Vickery’s focus on the popularization of Austen is why she emphasizes all this – she does have a few chats with Austen scholars John Mullan and Kathryn Sutherland, but her emphasis is on this commercial aspect – indeed her show itself is a sign of this! – she is an academic and has made good trade on Austen as a popular figure, otherwise her show would never be aired, would have no interested viewers, or much content for that matter! At the JASNA AGM, she dwells on the bonnets and regency dress – we see all the shots are of people in period clothing, when those who dress really comprise only a percentage of those attending the conference. Because I was there, I understand that what she has included in the show is only this small part of the conference – but any other viewer not familiar with the JASNA gatherings will, like Tony, assume that this dressing up and buying merchandise and dancing is the purpose of JASNA, all leading to this unfortunate take on America as a crass-commercial place – I am hopeful that not everyone who sees this show will take this from it! Tony, as dear as he is to all who follow his posts on Jane Austen’s World as well as his own blog, has just in this documentary found fodder for his skewed view of the US – we must band together to dissuade him from this one-sided take on America!
I am not a huge fan of some of the commercialization, but indeed, has not the UK quite the money-making Jane Austen cottage industry of its own?? – tours, merchandise, books and sequels – all this does not just come from America and Americans are not the only purchasers – this is a world-wide phenomenon and those who chose to get caught up in it are not necessarily crass consumers – it is one’s way of showing love and devotion to a quite illusive author.
And as for the merchandise culture – as the RC for the JASNA-Vermont Region, I will say that the selling of calendars and books and trinkets and whatever to our members is a huge help in allowing me to create meaningful meetings with fabulous speakers, great food and camaraderie – all takes time and money – so sometimes this commercial aspect is just a way to feed back into the reason we are all interested in Jane Austen to begin with – her unsurpassed works of fiction…
So I urge you to see this documentary for what it is worth – a very brief and very entertaining view into the popular world of Jane Austen [Vickery is certainly an appealing host] – today in the 21st century – it might behoove Vickery to do a follow-up documentary on what is going on in the academic world of Austen – why is there a continual discussion of her works, from various scholars with different viewpoints, different literary theories – I compile the annual Austen bibliography and if one is not clear on the academic side of Austen you might want to look at the authors and titles of the various books and journal essays on Austen in any given year. What you should notice is that a good number of these critical writers are also speakers at the annual JASNA conference – not one shows up in Vickery’s show, but they were there in full-force, giving us all much to think about and discuss with the person next to us, whether they were sporting a bonnet or not..…
Way to go, Janeite Deb. I was the 1st one to respond to the crass commercialism reference in Tony’s review of the program but you have stated it far better than I did. Tony does have a skewed view of Americans that I have noticed in other reviews and comments he has made. What say we all put together our monies and bring Tony over here for some JASNA chapter meetings and an AGM? Perhaps that might cause him to rethink his position on Americans and Jane Austen. Love ‘ya Tony, but you really are incorrect about what drives American Janeites.
Hi Karen! – yes, I saw that you called Tony on his take on America! – Bravo to you! and I thought you stated it quite eloquently! – what I didn’t write was that I had been in touch with Tony before he posted this and he actually toned it down after I told him about what really went on at this JASNA AGM – but he stood by his orginal thoughts that the Vickery documentary does emphasize the commercial aspect and it is a good point – and therefore the concern that anyone outside the JASNA sphere who watches this will get that impression as well. [I did note that when talking about the Bath festivities, he thought “it not all bad” – yet we do not get the same pardon!
Yes! let’s pool our resources and get him over here to give him a true JASNA dunking and realign his thinking! The New York City extravaganza will certainly put him over the edge! – Tony, what do you think?!
Deb
I couldn’t add any more to my above way-too-long epistle, but did want to say that now that I have seen the show, I can see that Tony’s review of “The Many Lovers of Jane Austen” was spot-on and a wonderful summary – just that stab at America and our propensity for crass trade and commerce in all that we approach got my goat! … so had to speak up – otherwise it is a great review!
One thing I thought was odd for Vickery to leave out – the long-term effect of the R. W. Chapman Oxford edition of Austen on the scholarly and reading culture of the 20th century and beyond – did anyone else think this was a standout omission?? especially since she so emphasized the Leavis’ contribution??
Deb
Do you think, Deb, that Vickery was trying to distance herself from Jane’s Fame? I thought that the territory she covered in the special was awfully familiar and served as a video summary of the book. It was interesting to note that she interviewed Kathryn Sutherland, who wrote an earlier more scholarly explanation of the rise of Jane Austen’s popularity.
I agree Vic that Vickery was covering the same territory that Harman did and Sutherland before her (in JA’s Textual Lives) – Juliette Wells’ book coming out in March will do the same, and Brownstein’s book Why Jane Austen covers much of it as well – Vickery offers a skimming video and entertaining synopsis of it all – and as always in such 1-hour documentaries one can see gaps and those things not covered at all [Chapman for instance] – in trying to capsule it, one gets a skewed view of all the issues [like JASNA gatherings!] – sort of like making a movie of an Austen novel – all that is left out is far more interesting than what is often there!
But that all said, I think for those who do not know alot about Austen, it was a great introduction or explanation for those [and there are some!] who do not read Austen and seem quite appalled at all the fuss in this 21st century!
I did wonder about the Cambridge / Oxford thing as perhaps why Chapman was not mentioned?!
Deb
Thank you everyone for your brilliant responses. I have enjoyed our discussion immensely..
Thank you for your invitation to New York. I take it you mean the JASNA conference this year?
It’s my 60th birthday in June. Marilyn and I might make it over to New York as a birthday treat. Karen and Deb, if you two can get us entry to the conference as non JASNA members then we might try and make it.
Deb I’ve been lookking into the Chapman// Leavis thing. F.R. Leavis appears to me the more complete literary critic of the two.. Leavis produced theories based on a moral analysis of a novel. This is why he chose Conrad,, James,, Elliot, and Austen.He thought there writing encapsulated the human moral condition more than others. Eventually he did include Dicken’s in this hierarchy.He Little Dorrit the most complete novel ever. To some extent he was limited and limiting in this approach. Anybody who went against him and his wife could lose their jobs, well almost.He was very dominant in the world of literary criticism which he saw as deeper than a mere art form.
Chaman on the other hand , the editor of the Oxford university press and compiler of the Oxford Engllish dictionary, publlished jane Austen’s novels was not nearly as dominant in his annalytical work as Leavis. The Oxford Dictionary and of course his life of Samuel Johnson were his great works.
I don’t know Deb but that is the way it seems to me. It’s not the Oxford Cambridge thing. as far as I can see.. To tell you the truth I don’t know enough about the two of them.
Here is a short bio of Amanada Vickery. She did go to Cambridge, I must admit.
She seems to have blazed a trail across American Universities too Ha! Ha! Well that’s a it of a revelation!!!!!!!!
“Amanda Vickery was born and raised in Preston, Lancashire. Growing up in a matriarchal mill town where wives historically worked out of the house as well as in, fostered her love of social and economic history, and her fascination with the warp and woof of work and family, power and emotion. Truth to tell, life in a cotton town also inspired a life-long love of clothes.
After a London University B.A. and Ph.D and research fellowships at the Institute of Historical Research and Churchill College, Cambridge, Amanda Vickery took up a lectureship at Royal Holloway, University of London in 1991, later promoted to professor. She has held fellowships at the Clark Library, UCLA, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Huntington Library, California. From 2004-7 she enjoyed a Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship. In 2007, Amanda was visiting professor at the Historicum, Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich. In 2008, she was offered the Fletcher Jones distinguished visiting professorship at the Huntington. In 2010, she was Kratter Professor at Stanford University, USA.”
Hi Tony,
Yes, I knew that Vickery went to Cambridge so that is why I brought that up! I agree about Leavis, but it is actually his wife’s [Queenie] critical essays on Austen that are still considered the best analysis of her works.
It is interesting to note that it was also Chapman’s wife [Katharine Metcalfe] who first edited Pride and Prejudice and then R.W. took over to do all the novels for his Oxford edition. Vickery should have mentioned this because Chapman’s Austen editions were the first such complete works of any English author – and laid the way for the average reader to have ready access to her works that included analysis and context of the times. Leavis was much more in the ivory tower and did not affect the common reader as such – and as Vickery was most preoccupied with popular culture, I just think she should have given Chapman some mention…
Thanks Tony for your history of Leavis and Vickery!… and yes, I was referring to the JASNA 2012 conference in New York in October… the topic I fear will not change your views about America – it is called “Sex, Money, and Power in Jane Austen’s Fiction” ! here is a link:
http://www.jasna.org/agms/newyork/index.html
and unfortunately you have to be a member of JASNA to attend – but I could certainly ask about that – and say that it is for the good of Anglo-American relations that you be allowed to attend at least one of the sessions!
Deb
[…] comparison: see JEAL’s portrait at Jane Austen’s World (the Vickey program review) and also this blog’s Portraits page, which has a silhouette from the British Library’s […]
[…] might also like to check in at Jane Austen’s Regency World blog to see a review of the show by Tony Grant and the numerous (some indignant!) comments on his take […]
Hi Vic,
I’ve only just discovered your Blog and have very much enjoyed what i have read.
I was particularly interested in what you said about Bath – ‘In “Persuasion” especially Jane portrays the underclass side of Bath alongside the rich upper-class side.’
It is beyond belief that someone with Austen’s powers of observation was unaware of the huge divide between the “haves” and “have-nots” in Bath and the terrible conditions in which the poor survived.
This is a theme I am trying to explore in the Blog I have recently set up
http://unpublishedwriterblog.wordpress.com
If you have the chance to take a look i would very much appreciate any feedback.
The georgian facades of the city, though still beautiful, are to some extent illusory, as they were in Austen’s day. The image that is still being sold today hides many guilty secrets, as it always has.
Hello,
I just wanted to make the comment that the mug you have pictured on this blog post was created by me for a prize/present on my blog-it is a one-off and was not made to make money.
Jane Odiwe
Jane, I understand. My blog also is not commercial, as yours is not. So sorry that the mug was included in a random screen shot related to Jane Austen. I removed it. Vic
I would also like to add that many authors contribute books or make donations from their earnings to help places connected with Jane Austen. Whether Amanda Vickery was making a point about commercialism or not, I think the perception is often that people who write sequels and prequels are somehow in it to make money. Most of us write because we love to carry on Jane’s stories.
Jane, Please understand that this post is written from Tony’s perspective. Many Janeites agree with you and read the sequels and prequels because they want to carry on Jane’s stories and love the characters.
I post Tony’s thoughts, as well as my own, because this blog features many points of view. Vic
Jane, I apologise that your picture was published without permission.
As Vic has said, the opinions expressed are mine. I like to create discussion and sometimes taking a strong view point creates this. I always feel that discussion is healthy and that some sort of wishy washy consensus does none of us any good.
I hope I have not upset you personally.
All the best,
Tony
Vic, I would say that the Janeites who commented on the Amanda Vickery production, on your blog, were quite animated by the charge of commercialism, albeit, from those who stand to benefit from the increasing audience of Jane Austen fans!
The consensus probably surprised you, as well as Tony!
Sincerely,
Barbara Kidder
Barbara, Thank you for your comments. I love that you have generated a lively discussion and made many of us think of how we feel about Jane Austen’s current fame. When Tony first sent in his review of Amanda Vickery’s special, he, Deb Barnum, and I had a lively 2-day, three-way discussion about publishing his thoughts. We knew that his article would generate many comments. Although we all disagreed about certain points, at the end I decided to go ahead and publish Tony’s article on my blog, as I truly support many different points of view. I view this blog as another forum for people to feel free to express their opinions about Jane Austen, her novels, and her lasting fame.
Voc
Sorry, I should have appreciated that the piece was written by Tony and not by Vic – Apologies.
Don’t feel bad, Unpub, I had no clue the piece was written by Tony until today either! I thought you had to click to read his “controversial review” and kept wondering where it was and why there were all these remarks about the repellent commercialism of Americans. What can I say, it’s hard to keep things straight after sixty. For my part, I’ve published two sequels, in 1994 and 2008, and can say with Lucy Steele, that “how little soever there might be, I should be very glad to have it all,” only I believe that my expenses pretty much cancelled out my earnings. If that’s crass commercialism I daresay they do it better in England, where even Jane Austen earned a little Pewter.
Apologies again. This time to Diana. The above was meant as a response to you. I’m pretty new to this wordpress blogging thing – as is probably apparent from my own blog.
There’s certainly no lack of “crass commercialism” in England. We have a whole tourism industry built on image and selective re-telling of history.
In Austen’s time, Bath was the 9th biggest city in the country. It was congested, noisy, polluted and incredibly smelly, with poor sanitation and an uncertain water supply. Much of its population was very poor and lived in slums. There is little wonder that a girl born and brought up in the country had, in reality, no great liking for the place. Yet its image persists, and though its remaining Georgian splendour is still worth seeing, i wish it could be seen in its true perspective – which is how I believe Austen saw it.
As she said in her letter to her sister – “The first view of Bath in fine weather does not answer my expectations; … the appearance of the place from the top of Kingsdown was all vapour, shadow, smoke, and confusion.”
fanny and edmund deserve each other. such spiritless boring characters. mary would be bored shitless with him. id prefer mary any day.