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A review by minniesmiscellanies
A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections by James Edward Austen-Leigh, Henry Austen, Caroline Austen, Kathryn Sutherland, Anna Austen Lefroy
4.0
4*
By now, the various family "biographies" of Austen have become more valuable for their lessons on hagiography and distortion rather than the quality of information they provide (even though they are doubtlessly the most important of the precious few accounts we have on Austen's life), which I thought Sutherland did a very good job at highlighting in her introduction and notes. I thoroughly enjoyed this as a collection of edited works, not so much for their own worth - although it is charming to imagine Austen in her private moments, stylised though they may be -, but to see how different the image we get from reading her letters is from the one her family worked so hard to carve out of a completely unyielding material.
By now, the various family "biographies" of Austen have become more valuable for their lessons on hagiography and distortion rather than the quality of information they provide (even though they are doubtlessly the most important of the precious few accounts we have on Austen's life), which I thought Sutherland did a very good job at highlighting in her introduction and notes. I thoroughly enjoyed this as a collection of edited works, not so much for their own worth - although it is charming to imagine Austen in her private moments, stylised though they may be -, but to see how different the image we get from reading her letters is from the one her family worked so hard to carve out of a completely unyielding material.