Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any
library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen.
I heard that quote
from Mark Twain on MPR a few weeks ago. I thought, Twain and Austen have
something in common. In more than twelve years of searching for collectible
books, I have never found a copy of either of these authors from before 1900. I’ve sold Twain in 1920’s editions but no
Austen from before 1950. The conclusion is that if anyone has an old edition of
Jane Austen, they are not letting go of it.
I scrolled through
all of Austen’s editions from before 1900 on Abebooks. Yes, if I ever come
across an edition from before 1920, the book is rare. An author I would like to
collect just isn’t usually found. And Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn
from before 1900? Very few available.
Twain was an
outspoken man about classic literature but his dislike of Jane Austen, which I
don’t think is fair, reminded me of a feud in my college English department. I
did student work there and heard a few of the frays. A professor that women
warned was a misogynist believed that Austen had no place in a college English
course. One of my favorite professors taught Austen, attended conferences on
her, wrote papers on her, and avidly defended her place in the English
department. My typical luck, I had been assigned to the chauvinist professor’s
freshman composition course. Following advice, I took it as one of my few
Pass/Fail's. I was to pass but after my final paper, he kept returning it to my
mailbox with the note that if I didn't fix the errors, I would fail. I
looked and looked, knowing it was probably the footnotes, until finally, I
found a period missing there. I corrected it and passed the course. No kidding,
he was hard on Jane Austen too.
My Jane Austen wishlist: (click on the book to see the listing)
Austen wrote a novel
like no one else in her time, crafting her work with the elegance that was within
her boundaries. Women then had to marry to have any kind of life, and she had a
mission, wanting good matches for life. Her renewed popularity in the early
2000’s was at first puzzling. I thought it might be due to contemporary work
situations and the enforced levels of communication between men and women. If
there is interest in the modern workplaces, it usually has to occur within a
careful framework.
I’ve relished stories
about workplaces, from classics such as “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “The
Catbird Seat” to our time. The workplace often has humor inherent which seems
to be from personalities clicking and conflicting.
My adult novel Tug
of the Wishbone has a number of scenes from work in it. I think they gave
the book some balance from the relationship and interior sections. Maureen’s
personal quest and her camera work led to many descriptive scenes. Finally, I
had to do some cutting on the book. I had a goal after I researched women’s
novels. I did not dare to sprawl like Charlotte Bronte. My goal was the length
of an Austen novel which I accomplished, just about. In contemporary terms, I
admired Penelope Fitzgerald’s well-crafted snug novels. Some of my cuts were
offbeat scenarios and anecdotes about places and people of a region, part of a
photographer’s viewpoint, but ideas for another kind of story, essay, or
memoir.
Mark Twain might not
have known of Jane Austen’s juvenilia. I
thought it hilarious and theorized that she was inspired by Henry Fielding. One of her characters planned an elopement during a
wild carriage ride, another demanded a Blifel-like suitor to guarantee an extravagant
floral conservatory and novelty carriage, another posed suggestively in
acrobatics at a costume party where the rich host, dressed as the sun, sat a
hallway away. The teenage Jane had the spirit of a Tom Sawyer. I imagined her
clergyman father disciplining her to write an acceptable piece of fiction. I
also thought that if she lived today, she might actually have become part of
comedy team and never written a novel. After all, she went to a most popular
social scene at Bath, and with freedom, might not have made it back to her
father’s parsonage.
While I believe that Huckleberry Finn is an
incredibly great book if only Twain didn’t write in dialect so much, I had to
consider Twain’s female characters - Tom Sawyer’s aunt and the morbid female poet in
Huck Finn, both satirized for their gullibility and sentimentality. In fact,
American women poets of the nineteenth century often wrote memorial poems
for funerals. Many American lives have been described in poetic form, I found
in books by nineteenth century American women poets.
