Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane
Who was Jane Austen? A quiet, submissive, Regency spinster who just happened to write some of the most enduring and widely read novels in literary history? Or a ‘wild beast’ as she called herself in a letter to her sister Cassandra? In Wild for Austen, scholar and self-confessed ‘Janeite’ (although she’d rather be an ‘Austenite’) Devoney Looser makes the case for Jane Austen’s wilder side in an entertaining and informative read.
In part one, Looser seeks out wildness across the full canon of Austen’s writing including unfinished works, juvenilia, poems, and her six much loved novels. She discusses Marianne’s wild despair over Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, and Elizabeth’s wild appearance at Netherfield in Pride and Prejudice. In part two, Jane’s life is put into context, demonstrating her life was more eventful and worldly than some biographers have suggested. Highlights include her aunt’s arrest and trial for shoplifting, and her sister-in-law’s escape from revolutionary France. And in part three, Looser considers the ways in which Austen’s life and work have fascinated people in the two hundred and fifty years since her birth, and even how her own love for Austen has changed through the years.
Written in an easy style and including a wealth of interesting, well-sourced information, Wild for Austen is a must-read for Janeites everywhere.
