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A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane
by Devoney Looser
Incisive, funny, and deeply-researched insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen, by the preeminent scholar Devoney Looser.
Thieves! Spies! Abolitionists! Ghosts! If we ever truly believed Jane Austen to be a quiet spinster, scholar Devoney Looser puts that myth to rest at last in Wild for Austen. These, and many other events and characters, come to life throughout this rollicking book. Austen, we learn, was far wilder in her time than we've given her credit for, and Looser traces the fascinating and fantastical journey her legacy has taken over the past 250 years.
All six of Austen's completed novels are examined here, and Looser uncovers striking new gems therein, as well as in Austen's juvenilia, unfinished fiction, and even essays and poetry. Looser also takes on entirely new scholarship, writing about Austen's relationship to the abolitionist movement and women's suffrage. In examining the legacy of Austen's works, Looser reveals the film adaptations that might have changed Hollywood history had they come to fruition, and tells extraordinary stories of ghost-sightings, Austen novels cited in courts of law, and the eclectic members of the Austen extended family whose own outrageous lives seem wilder than fiction.
Written with warmth, humor, and remarkable details never before published, Wild for Austen is the ultimate tribute to Jane Austen.
"Hyperfocused and not exactly groundbreaking, but well informed and fun for die-hard fans." —Kirkus Reviews
"Wide-ranging exploration…There is a great deal of intriguing material on offer...Austen fans will relish these fresh insights." —Publishers Weekly
"With a fresh and funny take and plenty of serious scholarship mixed with personal anecdotes, this title is very enjoyable. A new, and overdue take on Jane Austen's wild side. Sure to delight Jane Austen fans." —Library Journal
"Thoughtful and in-depth…An irreverent and loving take on the iconic Austen, celebrating her centuries of popularity and relevance." —Booklist
"I'm wild about Devoney Looser. No one else wears such deep Austen scholarship so lightly. A brilliant book!" —Lucy Worsley, internationally bestselling author of Jane Austen at Home
"Roller-skating twenty-first century scholar meets iconic nineteenth-century author in this dazzling new book. Combining meticulous historical scholarship with acute understanding of present culture, Devoney Looser replaces the old reticent Jane Austen with a woman thoroughly embedded in her turbulent times―and ours." —Janet Todd, author of Living with Jane Austen
This information about Wild for Austen was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Devoney Looser, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, is the author of Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës and The Making of Jane Austen. A Guggenheim Fellow and an NEH Public Scholar, Looser has written for The Atlantic, New York Times, Salon, Slate, and The Washington Post. She is a life member of the Jane Austen Society of North America and played roller derby under the name Stone Cold Jane Austen.
If you liked Wild for Austen, try these:
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With all the wit of a Jane Austen novel, and a case as beguiling as any in Sherlock Holmes' casebook, Paraic O'Donnell introduces a detective duo for the ages, and slowly unlocks the secrets of a startling Victorian mystery.
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