Jane Austen: A Literary Celebrity, by Peter J. Leithart – A Review

From the desk of Laurel Ann Nattress: 

There are several biographies in print on Jane Austen (1775-1817) revealing her life, family, and her inspiration to become a writer. Two very famous books come to mind: Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin (1998) and oddly the same title published in the same year by David Nokes. Both books were extensively researched and are quite lengthy. This new slim volume, Jane Austen: A Literary Celebrity, by Dr. Peter J. Leithart runs 192 pages and fills an entirely different niche. While the lengthier and exhaustive expositions might appeal to historical researchers, biography enthusiasts, and her dedicated fans, the size alone would intimidate the average reader or student seeking the “sparks notes” version so-to-speak of her life. In addition, very few biographies reflect upon the influence of her Anglican faith as a guide to Christian morality in her life and novels. In the introduction Dr. Leithart’s summarizes his motivation for writing the book and its emphasis:

“In the brief compass of this biography, I have tried to capture the varied sides of Austen’s character. Early biographers often turned her into a model of Victorian Christian domestic femininity, and emphasized her Christian faith in an evangelical idiom she never used. In reaction, many more recent biographers all but ignore her faith. Both of those extremes distort Austen’s life and personality. I have tried to depict accurately the depth and sincerity of her Christianity, as well as her Anglican discomfort with religious emotion, but without losing sight of the other sides of her complex character –her playfulness, her satiric gift for ridicule, her ‘waspishness,’ her rigid morality. I have attempted to capture Jane Austen in full.” (pp xvi)

An Inauspicious Beginning

The introduction is entitled Janeia, a term penned by Dr. Leithart to describe “the current obsession with everything Austen” by the media and her fervent fans. If you admit you are one of her disciples, then you are a Janeiac. One fellow reviewer described it as a disease. Leithart describes it as dementia while elaborating on Austen’s pop-culture phenomena and its inaccurate memory of depicting her life and characters.

“Austen has become what she never was in life, what she would have been horrified to be: a literary celebrity.”

With mild academic disdain, we are taken on a brief tour through her rise in readership through the 19th to 21st centuries and her recent Hollywoodization through movies, books, and spinoffs. In my view, this was an inauspicious beginning of a biography for readers who may not have read about Austen’s life before. That, and I am feigning my own “Austen fandom ridicule fatigue” from being poked at by zombie fans, the media, and Austen nay-sayers for the past few years. I am an Austen fan and I do embrace a sense of the ridiculous, but enough already. Go pick on Bronte fans for a while, please.

Austen’s Life, Work, & World Explored

Besides this eyebrow-raising beginning, this is really a solid compact biography on an important literary figure which I enjoyed it. Leithart includes all the important moments of Austen’s life and also gives us a great background on her family and others in her circle who influenced her education, her social and religious views, and her writing. In seven succinct chapters, we learn of Austen’s wholly English world, her gentry-class family background as a minister’s daughter, home-school education, early manuscripts, disruptions in her writing, final publication, death, and later widespread growth in popularity. There is also a helpful appendix of family, friends, and neighbors and the second appendix of characters in her novels that are mentioned in this biography.

A Few Foibles

Even though Jane Austen: A Literary Celebrity has its charms, I must point out a few foibles. Technically it is lacking in an index which I find imperative in biographies no matter how brief, or long. Leithart draws from many reputable scholarly sources such as Claire Tomalin, David Cecil, Claudia Johnson, Deirdre Le Faye, Claire Harman, and many family letters and recollections citing them in the notes in the back of the book by chapter. I prefer footnotes so you do not have to flip back and forth. Small quibble, I know, but it adds to quicker reference and less disruptive reading. Repeatedly he refers to Jane Austen as “Jenny” but failed to cite the one reference that we know of where she is called this nickname by her father Rev. George Austen when he wrote to his sister on the event of her birth. His reasoning for the repeated use of  “Jenny” was to emphasize the young child-like qualities she retained throughout her life.

“Childlikeness might not strike us an apt description of a “serious” novelist like Austen, but this only highlights how pretentious we are about art and artists. Anyone who spends her life making up stories has got to have more than her fair share of whimsy, and nearly all Austen’s virtues, personal and artistic, as well as nearly all of her vices, are those of a woman who, at the center of her soul, remained “Jenny Austen” all her life.”

This is debatable, but an interesting opinion.

Anglican Influence

Pastor, professor and Austen scholar Dr. Peter Leihart has a passion for Austen and her works that permeate throughout this biography. Readers could equate him to a modern-day C.S. Lewis or more accurately the 21st-century version of George Saintsbury who coined the term Janeite in 1894. Even though I had my concerns about how Leithart would present Christianity in Jane Austen’s life and novels, in the long-run it all fit together quite seamlessly. This was not Mr. Collins sermonizing or Edmund Bertram being priggish, but a natural extension of what formed Jane Austen’s character and fueled her brilliant imagination for the enjoyment of millions of readers.

Publishing Journey

Kudos to publisher Thomas Nelson for resurrecting this biography after its first publisher Cumberland House Press folded in 2009 and sold its catalog to Sourcebooks who then passed on publishing it. This was a considerable surprise given that Sourcebooks is the largest publisher of Jane Austen sequels in the world. Like oil and water, do Austen biographies and sequels not mix? I know it is business, but this is the oddest publishing putdown I have heard of in some time and all the more reason to obtain this lovely slim volume for your own edification and enjoyment. Oh, and Dr, Leithart thinks “Real men read Austen.”

Editor’s Note: This is an updated review to reflect yet another edition of this biography. Previously it was titled, Jane Austen: Christian Encounters, and published by Thomas Nelson in 2010. 

4 out of 5 Stars

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BOOK INFORMATION

• Jane Austen: A Literary Celebrity, by Peter J. Leithart
• Thomas Nelson (August 30, 2022)
• Trade paperback, eBook, & audiobook (192) pages
• ISBN: 978-0785293330
• Genre: Literary Biography, Austenesque

AMAZON | PUBLISHER | ADD TO GOODREADS

We received a review copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. Cover image courtesy of Thomas Nelson © 2022; text Laurel Ann Nattress © 2010 and updated 22 December 2022, austenprose.com, an Amazon affiliate.

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