Ennos - Jane Austen A New Revelation

Copyright 2013 Senesino Books Limited

Cover Illustration Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse by Sir Joshua Reynolds

Courtesy of the Huntington Art Collections, San Marino, California.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Senesino Books Limited

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M1 3LZ

ISBN 9780957687011

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

TO MITYA

Mindenemet magammal hordozom.

s ami enym volt, enym marad

Innen is, tl is a csillagokon,

Mert llek vagyok, vgtelen, szabad.

Bennem elfrnek mind, kik rmhajoltak,

A fk, s a lombok s az aluv rt,

Bennem elfrnek az lk s a holtak.

All that I have I bring with me

And all that was mine stays with me

Here on earth and beyond the stars

For my soul is free and without end

In it there is room for all who leaned on me

The leafy trees and the sleepy meadows

In it there is room for the living and the dead

(Sndor Remnyik)

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to thank my wife Larisa for all her help and support with this project, including her pencil illustrations.

Secondly, I would like to thank all those who gave me permission to use parts of their work in this book, and to reproduce their illustrations and paintings. In particular, I would like to thank David Gilson and Peter Jones, Librarian of Kings College, Cambridge for the use of the poem by James Austen. I have used my best endeavours to contact everyone I can to obtain permissions for any quotations and would welcome any correspondence from those who I have been unable to contact.

I would like to apologise for the lack of footnote references or superscript numbers, although full references, for those who would like them, are given for all quotations in the bibliography. This is something that I feel strongly about.

I would wish to return to the former practice that read non-fiction as literature, rather than academic research. Lately literature has become increasingly corralled within that by now rather tired form, the unaptly named novel. Another consideration is that I have written my book for the intelligent reader rather than the academic. A further justification is that the presence of footnotes or reference numbers can lend a spurious air of authority to even the most outrageous falsehoods.

Apology

Tuon aber ich diu gelche nuo

und schepfe mniu wort dar zuo,

daz mir ir iegelches sage

von disem maere missehage,

so wirbe ich anders, danne ich sol.

ich entuon es niht: s sprchen wol

und niwan z edelem muote

mir unde der werlt ze guote.

binamen si tten ez in guot.

und swaz der man in guot getuot,

daz ist ouch guot und wol getn.

aber als ich gesprochen hn,

daz s niht rehte haben gelesen,

daz ist, als ich iu sage, gewesen:

But were I now to do the same

And in this book of mine should claim

That every word of theirs they write

Is not pleasing in my sight

I would act wrongly, truth to tell

I wont do this: for they wrote well

And their intentions, as they understood

Were only for mine and for the worlds good.

No doubt they wrote in good faith for us

And anything which a man does thus

Is also good, nobly done and sincere

But as I have already made it clear

What they have written is untrue

This is the case, as I have told it you.

(Gottfried von Straburg, Tristan)

1.

Introduction

Ich hn mir eine unmezekeit

der werlt ze liebe vr geleit

und edelen herzen zeiner hage,

den herzen, den ich herze trage,

der werlde, in die mn herze siht.

ine meine ir aller werlde niht

als die, von der ich hoere sagen,

diu keine swaere enmge getragen

und niwan in vruden welle sweben.

die lze ouch got mit vruden leben!

Der werlde und diseme lebene

enkumt mn rede niht ebene.

An endeavour I have undertook

Set out in this my modest book

Of the world to please the better part,

To bring solace to their noble heart

The world over which my heart has charge

This part but not the world at large

Like those of whom Ive heard it said

Believe everything that they have read.

Their only wish in life is this:

To remain happy in their ignorant bliss.

Of their world here you will not find a trace

I gladly leave them to Gods grace!

(Gottfried von Straburg, Tristan)

Literary biography is the illegitimate child of biography and literary criticism. The literary biographer is faced on the one hand with the life of the writer and, on the other, their works. Literary biography is the attempt to shoehorn the one into the other. Whilst literacy criticism is an art using the highest intellectual powers to investigate the works of the author, identification of the author usually consists of nothing more than a cursory inspection of the flyleaf.

To me it is incontestable that the great works of these two authors, Fanny Burney, who has been called by Virginia Woolf The mother of English fiction, and Jane Austen, compared by Thomas Babington Macaulay and George Henry Lewes to a prose Shakespeare, were the work of one and the same directing mind, a woman of outstanding genius who was forced to remain anonymous during her lifetime, but whose genius and generosity were reflected in her colourful and eventful life.

This book is written for those people with enquiring minds who wish to discover the life of this woman and to look for her reflection in the great works that she left behind her, which were to revolutionise literature, create the modern novel and reward readers of future times with a legacy of literary masterpieces. Once a biographer is no longer burdened with the task of describing the inconsequential and uneventful lives of Jane Austen and Fanny Burney, he is free to open up vistas revealing the creative mind that lay behind these works of genius.

2.

The Authorship Problem

Ir ist s vil, die des nu pflegent,

daz si daz guote zbele wegent,

daz bel wider ze guote wegent:

die pflegent niht, si widerpflegent

So many critics now we read

That judge whats good as bad, indeed,

The bad, in turn, to good transmute

They bring critics into disrepute.

(Gottfried von Straburg, Tristan)

Brian Dillon in his essay Circumventing the Biographical Subject: Jane Austen and the Critics states that the evidence on which biographers have connected the life of Jane Austen to the books which bear her name is extremely flimsy. He writes that the existing material relating to Jane Austens biography is relatively slight, consisting merely of a volume of censored letters, a brief biographical statement penned by one of her brothers a year after her death, a memoir by a nephew recollected in tranquility over half a century after her death. He says that readers often wonder how this simplified biographical subject could have authored such powerful, challenging novels. In particular he notes that Readers are often troubled by the apparent gap between her life and her art when it comes to the issue of marriage. Could the author of