I'm trying to stay focused when it comes to the research I'm doing, but I saw this at the library and couldn't resist. I'm glad I went ahead and picked it up. It's short, accessible, and fascinating. The chapter about Austen's portrait -- is that really Austen, and is the "Rice Portrait" definitely *not* Austen? -- alone makes it worth reading.

I was also interested (and rather furious) to learn that R.W. Chapman, he of the famous Chapman editions of Austen's works, lifted "the entire setting of the text" of his *wife's* own scholarly edition of "Pride and Prejudice" "into volume 2 of his 1923 set without acknowledging it or her, much less accounting for this wholesale duplication." Grr.

I very much enjoyed Johnson's thoughts on Austen's writing. This is lovely:

"I lay it down as axiomatic that whenever objects are made to stand out with any sort of specificity in Austen's novels, something is wrong. ...In most cases, particular things become prominent because they are noticed by a character who is a snob, a bore, or worse. In _Northanger Abbey_, for example, we learn about the hothouse pineapples, Rumford stoves, and a set of Staffordshire china manufactured two years earlier because General Tilney, that great and nasty social climber, brags about them. He calls that set of Staffordshire 'old' because he has a passion for new and newfangled things, and two years makes them pitifully out of date."

This is that rare book about Austen and her work that might well be of interest to the most casual reader of Austen (if there is such a thing as a casual Austen reader), or to the reader who hasn't yet picked up her novels.

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I found this an extremely interesting book, which has subjects that even people who avoid professional criticism will enjoy. I am often among those, and I think about reading titles such as How to Read a Book, but I fear to ruin my reading experience. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Johnson's Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, I grabbed this eagerly. I don't mean to sound condescending, but the reader who normally flees professional criticism but is interested in history should give it a look, and of course it will be of interest to those who don't flee but actually seek out said criticism.

A discussion of whether or not Jane Austen is disembodied, one of the first topics in this book, would normally bore me, but this is quite interesting, particularly as Johnson comments upon the various possible portraits of Jane Austen (all of which are pictured) and includes several that I have not seen before. I have one comment: with regard to the Rice portrait (a full-length portrait of a girl in her early teens): the main objection that I have heard is that the subject's clothing is from a later time. Not that I am any expert, but Johnson might have addressed this issue. I can also understand why, when asked for a portrait of Jane, her sister Cassandra did not offer her own somewhat crude sketch, particularly if it wasn't a good likeness. Being of a prosaic mind, although I wish she had been in a living body longer, and written more books, the important thing to me is that she remains with us in her books.

Johnson then gives us an interesting history of views of Jane Austen in the Victorian era, World War I, World War II, and more recently. The critics of the past argue whether she was feminine or a man in a woman's body, a rebel or deeply contented with her society, and so forth. It is very interesting to read an overview of opinions, even with the obvious dangers, when I probably wouldn't want to actually plow through the originals. The main idea that I got from these chapters is that one finds the Jane Austen that one wants, as I suppose one does for most authors.

Johnson concludes with a history of the creation of the Chawton House museum, a discussion of its merits and demerits, and a consideration of whether such tributes are really meaningful. I personally am always in favor of preserving such places, whether or not I have any interest in its famous former occupants, simply to have the buildings and furnishings of an older time preserved. ( )