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brandifox's review against another edition
5.0
An excellent look at the many ways we’ve collectively interacted with the legacy of Jane Austen. If you are interested in her work or the cultural phenomena it has birthed this bit of accessible scholarship is an ideal read.
bak8382's review against another edition
3.0
This book focuses on how Austen became a celebrity author. Looser discusses little known and well known facts beginning with Austen’s first illustrators. Sadly the 1946 edition of P&P, that was my grandparents and is now mine, by the World Publishing Company and illustrated by Edgar’s Cirlin is not mentioned. Those illustrations are quite entertaining. Looser goes on to discuss dramatizations of Austen’s work, basically ending with the first movie version in the 1940s. She ends with a discussion of Austen in politics and education. There are some fascinating tidbits here, though the academic language means you need a lot of concentration.
losthitsu's review against another edition
4.0
Lots of small and seemingly disconnected bits of Austen history but the author manages to pull it together very convincingly in the end.
tonstantweader's review
4.0
Nearly everyone loves Jane Austen. People have favorites and can get quite heated over whether “Emma” or “Mansfield Park” or “Pride and Prejudice” are the best or who wrote the best completion of Sanditon or how anyone would dare, but outright dislike for Jane Austen? I sure, like the yeti, it may exist, but only in theory. Most everyone likes Jane Austen, but which one? There’s so many to choose from, the prim and proper defender of class and privilege, the saucy, dry wit skewering class and privilege, the proto-feminist whose success mocks the idea that great literature is written by men? In The Making of Jane Austen, Devoney Looser looks at how these many ideas of who Jane Austen was and how our understanding of her books was formed as much by people who publicized her work as by Jane Austen herself.
Clearly organized into sections that dive deeply into the illustrated, the dramatized, and the politicized Austen as well as Austen pedagogy, from the first dissertation to the McGuffey Reader, The Making of Jane Austen provides a review of how Austen’s image was shaped and shifted over time by those who marketed her work in books, films, and texts. Looser also looks at how both anti-suffrage men and suffragettes used Austen to prop up their viewpoint as people continue to look to Austen for conservative and liberal ideas. It seems Austen in almost biblical in her ability to be all things to all people.
What makes The Making of Jane Austen compelling, though, is the stories of people who are simply fascinating as the man who first illustrated Austen, Pickering. He was the ultimate perpetual student at the Royal Academy and his understanding of Austen reflected the melodrama of his real life perhaps more than the actual storylines. Then there is Pellow, who wrote the first Austen dissertation. He died under mysterious circumstances which no one seems to agree upon. I am curious why that mystery was not cleared up when the most famous medium of the time began channeling him.
When writing this review, I looked at the author’s web site and discovered she has posted many additional pictures of the illustrations, handbills, and other items she talks about in the book. I wish we had been directed there in the book, because she often wrote about illustrations in addtion to those in the book.
I love Jane Austen, in fact, I love Austen a bit too much to watch the films, TV series, and adaptations, let alone the zombies. I didn’t even watch “Clueless” because…”Leave my “Emma” alone!” However, I was interested in seeing how the perception of Austen may have changed over time or why there is such fervor at the moment. Perhaps it is because her novels can be read at two levels, as the conservative stories of love, marriage, and class sensibilities or the satiric sendup of those same things. Perhaps what we really find in Austen is ourselves.
In any event, Looser has persuaded me that Austen can stand up to good and bad adaptations, to silly vampires and serious Colin Firth, so I will no longer fear Austen being ruined by bad acting. Maybe I will even watch “Clueless.”
I received The Making of Jane Austen as a thank you gift from Johns Hopkins University Press with no obligation to review.
The Making of Jane Austen at Johns Hopkins University Press
Devoney Looser author site, Faculty Page at Arizona State University
Book Extras – more illustrations and photos for the book
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/07/15/the-making-of-jane-austen-by-devoney-looser/
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