Natalie Tyler - The Friendly Jane Austen: A Well-Mannered Introduction to a Lady of Sense and Sensibility

I have always suffered from a supercilious derision of authors who acknowledge a cast of thousands. I was hubristic. Although my debts may look like the cast listing of a Cecil B. De Mille epic, the reality is that it would be unthinkable of me not to mention the following people; each has contributed, sometimes very substantially, to my understanding of Jane Austen or of life in general (and a life without Jane Austen is unthinkable).

I am fortunate to have an exceptional triumvirate of people, without whom this book would never exist. First I must thank Norrie Epstein, who got me started, who kept me excited, and who has given me more than twenty years worth of some of the best conversations of my life. And David Riede: thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall.... Thanks, courteous wall. Jove shield thee well for this! He has been the wall without whom the scaffolding would have crumbled and il miglior fabbro in every sense. Finally Kris Puopolo, an incomparable editor whose coruscating wit and certainty have won my complete admiration and gratitude. Benedicite!

Thanks especially to all those people who generously gave of their time and their patience in providing me with ideas, interviews, and quotations for the book. Your insights, your intelligence, and your delight in Jane Austen are really the substance and the spirit of this book. Jane Austens works and her letters are my primary sources, but I would be more than remiss were I not to acknowledge the excellent material I have scrounged and filched from Austens biographers, those valiant people who did all the real research while I have reclined and read. Without the works of J. E. Austen-Leigh, Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, Douglas Bush, Jan Fergus, J. David Grey, John Halperin, Park Honan, Deborah Kaplan, Deirdre Le Faye, Valerie Grosvenor Myer, Nigel Nicolson, David Nokes, Brian Southam, Claire Tomalin, and George Holbert Tucker I would have had but a very limited understanding of what was indeed important to Jane Austen.

And many thanks to all the members of the Jane Austen Society of North America and the members of the Jane Austen Mailing List who patiently answered my questions and provided me with many intelligent and ingenious ideas. I am especially grateful to Joan Austen-Leigh, Shirley Gershen, Mary Hardenbrook, Julia Braun Kessler, Edith Lank, Elsa Solender, and Joan Vredenburgh. They all have contributed to this books virtues; I alone am responsible for its faults or infelicities.

I am much indebted to my friends, advisers, and necessary provocateurs and provocatrices who populate that checkerboard of mirth and misery, enigma and enchantment that makes up my life. They are Reid and Karen Boates, Diane Brounstein, bsb and nkn, Jennifer Ehmann, Barbara Fisher, Charles Flowers, Blynn Garnett, Dee Goodman, The Killerbees, Ellis Perlswig, who gave me my first copies of Jane Austens novels when I was sixteen years old, Sidney Oliver, Lindsay River, Gillian Speeth, Helen Spier and her excellent family, Gray Standen and Gli Amici, and Jon Winokur.

A particularly deep debt of obligation and gratitude goes to those friends and teachers who have joined the majority. I will always remember them with enormous fondness for their infectious gusto for art, language, and literature: Marilyn Sibley Fries, George Healey, Marjorie Jacobs, Arthur Mizener, James Rieger, John Arthur Sellers, James Leo Spenko, Karin Margaret Strand, and Clarence Tyler.

I can never appreciate sufficiently my family (does any of us?): my mother, Natalie Tyler, who never has tolerated a bookless home or a dull moment; my dear siblings, John, Carol, Cynthia, and Elizabeth; those young men Benedict and Austin Riede, who amaze and delight me with their wit, their banter, their startling sensitivities, and all those rich, moist, dense moments of Infinite Jest; the presence of Susanna Wolf; Joe and Cindy Jacobs, impresarios of my heart; that generous woman of mystery Betty Jane Riede; a wonderful, delightful generation of young nieces, nephews, and cousins: Chris, Margot, Tyler, Mallory, Alex, Jacob, Alison, Catherine, Bram, Bonny, Molly, Anna, Susan, Norah, and James; and lastly I bow low before those farouche bons vivants Doulton, Myra, Face, Oslo, Blixa, Bongo, Wolfie, and a certain superannuated gerbil.

All quotations from Jane Austens six major novels, from Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon are from the Penguin Editions. Quotations from Volume the First, Volume the Second, and Volume the Third are from R. W. Chapmans edition of The Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen. Material quoted from Jane Austens letters is gleaned from Deirdre Le Fayes third edition (1997) of the letters.