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A review by teresathistle
Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly
2.0
It's unbelievable how many factual errors there are in this book - did nobody edit it? Kelly refers to the title of Earl as rare, there being only a "handful" of them in England, despite there being 191 earls today, excluding courtesy titels. Why not look up how many there are before making such a statement, that could have easily been omitted?
Most glaringly thought, she connects a review of Elizabeth Bennet descriping her as the "Beatrice of the tale" with the heroine of Shakespeare's As You Like It - but hold on, that one's named Rosalind. Beatrice is found in Much Ado About Nothing.
When Kelly gets such basic facts wrong, how can I trust her analyses, often based not on Austen's text at all but rather on forced connections to other texts written during the same time?
Underlying the wild speculations are observations that are worth further investigating, but when an author says two characters are "bitching" about another, she loses her academic cred and her work becomes baseless speculation.
Most glaringly thought, she connects a review of Elizabeth Bennet descriping her as the "Beatrice of the tale" with the heroine of Shakespeare's As You Like It - but hold on, that one's named Rosalind. Beatrice is found in Much Ado About Nothing.
When Kelly gets such basic facts wrong, how can I trust her analyses, often based not on Austen's text at all but rather on forced connections to other texts written during the same time?
Underlying the wild speculations are observations that are worth further investigating, but when an author says two characters are "bitching" about another, she loses her academic cred and her work becomes baseless speculation.