Janine Barchas

Paper Jane reflects Austen’s heady reputation as a revered canonical author, even while her books are simultaneously enjoyed as "chick lit." Jane Austen's growing fame is measured at fifty-year intervals: in 1825, 1875, 1925, 1975, and 2025. In the semiquincentennial year of Jane Austen (1775–1817), she is arguably the best-known author in the English language after Shakespeare. However, this reputation was hard-won and was many years in the making. This book traces Jane Austen’s ascendence as a literary celebrity through print—from fine first editions to mass-market paperbacks, supplemented by manuscripts, movie posters, graphic novels, theater bills, play scripts, and paper currency. The temporal dimension makes this not only the story of Austen’s growing fame but also traces the changes in readers and reading culture over the last two centuries and a half. It demonstrates that cheap books are, in fact, the force that made “Miss Austen” canonical. Paper Jane accompanies an exhibition at The Grolier Club, drawing from private collections by Janine Barchas, Mary Crawford, and Sandra Clark.

'Stunning. Gobsmacking. Groundbreaking. What a gift to Austen fans the world over!' - Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society, Bloomsbury Girls & Every Time We Say GoodbyeThe Novel Life of Jane Austen is a beautifully illustrated graphic biography that brings to life the remarkable story of one of Britain's most beloved literary icons.Step into the world of Jane Austen with this captivating graphic novel that brings to life the beloved author's own story. Through delightful illustrations and engaging storytelling, you will journey from Austen's early years as a budding novelist, full of writerly ambition, to her posthumous fame as one of the most celebrated writers in literary history. Packed with biographical facts, The Novel Life of Jane Austen offers a unique perspective on Jane's view of the world around her - revealing her sharp wit, her keen observations on society and the struggles she faced in a male-dominated world where she lacked the leverage of rank or fortune. This graphic novel explores her family dynamics, the influences of her friendships and the moments that inspired Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion and other novels.A sparkling collaboration between renowned Austen expert Janine Barchas and New York Times bestselling graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg, this is not just a must-read for Janeites but for anyone curious about one of literature's most enduring figures.

A brilliant collaboration between internationally acclaimed Jane Austen expert, Janine Barchas, and New York Times bestselling graphic novelist, Isabel Greenberg. The Novel Life of Jane Austen is a one-of-a-kind, impeccably researched, ecstatically drawn graphic biography of one of the world's most beloved literary icons. Combining deep scholarship and serious whimsy, The Novel Life of Jane Austen presents this literary icon as the starring character in her own graphic novel. Told in three parts (Budding Writer 1796-1797); Struggling Artist 1801-1809; Published Author 1811-1817), the gritty circumstances of Austen's own genteel poverty and the small daily injustices so often borne by creative women at this time, are told against the backdrop of Georgian England and reflect, down to the smallest detail, many of the plots and characters woven into Austen's greatest works. All the settings and scenarios presented here are based upon the historical record, including the clothing, architecture, decor, and Regency locations. Sprinkled throughout, the Easter eggs and clever references to popular film adaptations of Austen's novels will satisfy the casual and avid Austen fan alike.

Hardcore bibliography meets Antiques Roadshow in an illustrated exploration of the role that cheap reprints played in Jane Austen's literary celebrity—and in changing the larger book world itself.Gold Winner of the 2019 Foreword INDIES Award for History by FOREWORD ReviewsIn the nineteenth century, inexpensive editions of Jane Austen's novels targeted to Britain's working classes were sold at railway stations, traded for soap wrappers, and awarded as school prizes. At just pennies a copy, these reprints were some of the earliest mass-market paperbacks, with Austen's beloved stories squeezed into tight columns on thin, cheap paper. Few of these hard-lived bargain books survive, yet they made a substantial difference to Austen's early readership. These were the books bought and read by ordinary people. Packed with nearly 100 full-color photographs of dazzling, sometimes gaudy, sometimes tasteless covers, The Lost Books of Jane Austen is a unique history of these rare and forgotten Austen volumes. Such shoddy editions, Janine Barchas argues, were instrumental in bringing Austen's work and reputation before the general public. Only by examining them can we grasp the chaotic range of Austen's popular reach among working-class readers. Informed by the author's years of unconventional book hunting, The Lost Books of Jane Austen will surprise even the most ardent Janeite with glimpses of scruffy survivors that challenge the prevailing story of the author's steady and genteel rise. Thoroughly innovative and occasionally irreverent, this book will appeal in equal measure to book historians, Austen fans, and scholars of literary celebrity.

In Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity, Janine Barchas makes the bold assertion that Jane Austen's novels allude to actual high-profile politicians and contemporary celebrities as well as to famous historical figures and landed estates. Barchas is the first scholar to conduct extensive research into the names and locations in Austen's fiction by taking full advantage of the explosion of archival materials now available online. According to Barchas, Austen plays confidently with the tension between truth and invention that characterizes the realist novel. Of course, the argument that Austen deployed famous names presupposes an active celebrity culture during the Regency, a phenomenon recently accepted by scholars. The names Austen plucks from history for her protagonists (Dashwood, Wentworth, Woodhouse, Tilney, Fitzwilliam, and many more) were immensely famous in her day. She seems to bank upon this familiarity for interpretive effect, often upending associations with comic intent. Barchas re-situates Austen's work closer to the historical novels of her contemporary Sir Walter Scott and away from the domestic and biographical perspectives that until recently have dominated Austen studies. This forward-thinking and revealing investigation offers scholars and ardent fans of Jane Austen a wealth of historical facts, while shedding an interpretive light on a new aspect of the beloved writer's work.

The uniformity of the eighteenth-century novel in today's paperbacks and critical editions no longer conveys the early novel's visual exuberance. Janine Barchas explains how during the genre's formation in the first half of the eighteenth century, the novel's material embodiment as printed book rivalled its narrative content in diversity and creativity. Innovations in layout, ornamentation and even punctuation found in, for example, the novels of Richardson, an author who printed his own books, help shape a tradition of early visual ingenuity. From the beginning of the novel's emergence in Britain, prose writers including Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Henry and Sarah Fielding experimented with the novel's appearance. Lavishly illustrated with more than 100 graphic features found in eighteenth-century editions, this important study aims to recover the visual context in which the eighteenth-century novel was produced and read.