Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World
Starred Review. Diverting anecdotes pepper award-winning British biographer Harman's (Myself and the Other Fellow: A Life of Robert Louis Stevenson) sharp and scholarly analysis of Jane Austen's life and the posthumous exploitation of her as a global brand having everything to do with recognition and little to do with reading. Tracing the rise and fall and rise of Austen's reputation against a larger historical backdrop, Harman chronicles the WWI-era worshipping Janeites; assessments of Austen that minimized her as an accidental artist; and modern post-feminist  criticism that, in exploring her politics, sexual and otherwise, has placed Austen in several mutually exclusive spheres at once. Harman notes that film versions have taken liberties with and overshadowed Austen's books, concluding that [o]ne of the horrible ironies of Austen's currency in contemporary popular culture is that she is referenced so freely … in discussions of 'empowerment,' 'girl power,' and all the other travesties of womanly self-fashioning that stand in for feminism today. Yet it is impossible to imagine a time when she or her works could have delighted us long enough. Harman herself delights with this comprehensive catalogue of Austen-mania. Illus. (Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.