The Letters of Jane Austen Book

This was a fascinating look into the world of Jane Austen, not just because I enjoy her as an author, but because of how closely her letters match her novels. The writing style is of course, similar, but even the wit behind some of the lines would just fit delightfully into one of her books. I particularly liked her descriptions of the people around her, which seemed so very in line with her characters, and her comments referencing how her newly published books had been received, which was interesting. I also enjoyed the letters in which she helped her niece with her writing with critiques (as well as praise), and her other niece with her affairs of the heart. She was filled with wisdom as well as wit.

What did make these difficult to read is how obviously some letters are missing or have been edited or censored. This makes perfect sense to me, as this was real correspondence between two actual people and I'm sure there are things that she and her sister would rather not have seen published. I'm glad her family was sensitive to that. It does make it difficult to follow certain trains of thought and references to people and places, especially when there are large time gaps, but during the times where things do follow, it's an interesting picture of how people in general and she in particular lived and thought and communicated at the time.

I probably won't revisit these letters too often, but I was glad I read it overall. I don't often highlight in my Kindle, but there were a couple of times where I just couldn't help it. She was just so clever, and I both wanted to write letters of my own and read her books all over again while reading these letters.