May 18, 2020
This meticulous treatise from Keymer (Poetics of the Pillory), an English professor at the University of Toronto, provides an effective overview of Jane Austen’s life and work. He begins by situating the reader in the physical world Austen inhabited, describing in detail the Elizabethan mansion where she stayed as a guest of her wealthy brother and the “snug little cottage” where she lived with her mother and sister and produced most of her writing. He then looks at the parodic, irreverent, and sometimes off-color writings she produced for her family’s amusement as a teenager, which are now viewed as evidence of her “disruptive instincts.” From here, Austen’s six published novels are dealt with in terms of major themes and relevant historical background—for Emma, he homes in on Austen’s concern with England’s “moral health and social wellbeing” in the decadent Regency era, and on the irony that she was compelled to dedicate the book to the man she held responsible for that decadence, the hard-living Prince Regent. Throughout, Keymer draws on Virginia Woolf’s views on Austen, whom the later novelist deemed the “forerunner of Henry James and of Proust,” particularly in relation to Austen’s final published work, Persuasion, whose protagonist Woolf saw as the “heroine with whom Austen most personally identified.” Janeites of all stripes should take note of this critically robust account.
Starred review from July 1, 2020
Keymer (Chancellor Henry N.R. Jackman Univ. Professor of English, Univ. of Toronto; Poetics of Pillory) presents a compact yet comprehensive study of Austen's literary practice that examines each of her major novels with insights gleaned from decades of scholarship and an obvious love for the author. Without explicitly alienating Janeites or those who practice "Austenolatry," Keymer concisely covers the literary, social, and political complexity of her works but never veers into pop culture. He could not have predicted how the most powerful statement in the book would be applied to our lives today: "Austen's popularity is often the strongest in times of crisis, when the serene world of the novels can offer a therapeutic escape." As we adapt to social distancing policies owing to covid-19, we may find ourselves fetishizing the domestic in an effort to comfort ourselves. Yet as Keymer wisely suggests, domesticity mirrors political disorder, and Austen's novels so aptly explore how experiences within the home write on that famous "bit of ivory" the story of nations, political crises, social change, and paradigm shifts in nuanced ways. VERDICT Highly recommended.--Emily Bowles, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
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