This is one of a few Jane Austen books I plan to read in celebration of her 250th birthday this year. I didn’t always agree with the author’s perspectives and ideas, but she challenged my thinking in a way that was almost nostalgic for me. It was as if I were sitting in a literature class once again and I mean that in a good way.

We both admire Jane Austen and upon that foundation I found much to be enjoyed in this unique book. Part memoir, part scholarly examination of various topics from the 18th and 19th centuries, and part meandering musings on Jane Austen and her works, this book is unlike any other Austen nonfiction I’ve ever read.

Thank you, Cambridge University Press and Austenprose for the opportunity to read this book ahead of publication. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

Review coming soon! Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.

Thanks so much to NetGalley for the free kindle book. My opinions are my own and are freely given.

As a lover of Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice, obviously being my favorite), I was delighted to get a free copy of this book. I tried to think of how to describe it, and the closest I came to (although it is one-sided and in a book) is a conversation about all of your favorite Austen characters and books. It doesn't take one book at a time but weaves them all together seamlessly, like a group of Janeites might do when getting together.

This book would be perfect not only just for those who read everything of Austen, but those who perhaps haven't read her works in years and maybe want to review it without taking the time to read all of her books. It also would be good for someone who knows absolutely nothing of her work but wants to pretend that they do in front of someone they are trying to impress, beyond just reading a wiki page.

I would definitely recommend this book!

Like the primrose or peony, Jane Austen’s novels (or Schubert’s Lieder) have become more beautiful to me now that I take time with them than they were half a lifetime ago. from Living with Jane Austen by Janet Todd

This year marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. When I studied her in 1978 not only had I never read her before, it was before television and movies brought her to attention, before her plots were updated for contemporary romances and satires, before her image appeared on a bank note. What a delight to read the thoughts of an academic who has studied Austen and her contemporaries, connecting her own experiences to Austen’s thoughts.

Janet Todd arranges the book by theme, exploring how Austen connects with readers, and how Austen’s advice has impacted Todd over her lifetime. She notes, “what I write are my own thoughts inspired by Jane Austen,” informed by her personal memories and reading life.

I hope that in what follows I can convey a little of the excitement that still overwhelms me as I go on reading Jane Austen. from Living With Jane Austen by Janet Todd

There is a chapter on Darcy as the prototype of the dark romantic hero, another on illness in Austen’s novels and in her personal life. Nature, advice giving, and even death are considered. She plumbs Austen’s candid letters (which shocked E. M. Forster), her satiric juvenilia, and novels for insights.

A wonderful portrait of Austen emerges. We almost believe we understand and know her. It inspires me to reread her novels one more time.

The book includes delightful illustrations, intricate hand cut silhouettes by Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

Living with Jane Austen is indeed an appropriate title for Janet Todd's incisive but gentle investigation of Austen's life. Weaving her observations and sympathies with her studies and reflections of her own life, Todd gives us her personal thoughts about Austen and her life. Approaching her studies of Austen and defining each category of Austen's life, Todd incorporates such topics as home, significant deaths, relations, illness, even patriotism in an effort to look comprehensively at Austen's life and thoughts. In Austen's letters and books, which Todd has studied, she comments on her own "desultory sort of writing." In fact, this self-evaluation of her writing seems unfair, as the writing in the book is anything but desultory, and it approaches Austen with a fully comprehensive and empathetic focus.

Todd has carried out an exhaustive look at Jane Austen, and she has left out none of the important considerations of Austen as a writer, as a sister, as a lover of nature, as one in possession of a brilliant mind, and as a friend. Todd also incorporates her knowledge of and writing about Mary Wollstonecraft as an important way to consider the balance of important emphases in Jane Austen's life.

Having read a number of books about Jane Austen (although certainly not all of them), I found this articulate, sympathetic, and considerate examination of Austen's life and of her approachable investments in her family, her neighbors, and the characters in her books to be revelatory and of great interest. Todd has skillfully studied Austen and at the same time, has incorporated her own life into her curiosity about Austen's motives, and her perspective on those around her. Austin's surroundings also become not just important, but Todd carefully and kindly relates them to her own considerations of Austen's world. Any and all followers of Jane Austen will be able to learn much about her and her environment, and Todd must be heralded for her brilliant observations in this book.

Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this book.