Table Of ContentJane, Actually
or Jane Austen’s Book Tour
Jennifer Petkus
© 2013 Jennifer Petkus
Published by Jennifer Petkus at Smashwords
Jane, Actually
or Jane Austen’s Book Tour
© 2013 Jennifer Petkus
Published by Jennifer Petkus at Smashwords
The cover illustration is © 2013 Jennifer Petkus
All rights reserved, whatever that means.
Sanditon cover photo by Michael “Mike” L. Baird.
Seen from Windy Point, on the Point Buchon Trail,
south of Montana de Oro State Park
in central California.
Published by
Mallard Sci-Fi,
an imprint of
Mallard Press
Denver, Colorado
Paperback edition
ISBN-13: 978-0615796710
ISBN-10: 0615796710
Kindle Edition
ASIN: B00D5H4TXE
visit www.janeactually.com
Thanks
I would like to thank my advance readers and proofreaders, especially my
sensei, Susan Chandler; fellow JASNA member Maryann O’Brien; my husband
James Bates; UK Janeite Christopher Sandrawich; and fellow Sherlockian
Michael J. Newman. Their kind assistance is not meant to be endorsements of
this story. Any mistakes are my fault.
Apologies
The real-life characters mentioned in this book have no association with or
knowledge of this book. Garrison Keillor didn’t write an introduction to Pride
and Prejudice; Brian Cox and Stephen Fry have never been on a radio program
with Jane Austen; Amanda Vickery has never interviewed her; Jane has never
been on the Graham Norton Show; and Colin Firth and Jane have never met. The
Austen scholars/authors Joan Klingel Ray, Deirdre Le Faye, Elisabeth Lenckos,
Janet Todd, Paula Byrne and Jon Spence mentioned in this book have my
deepest respect but I cannot claim their imprimatur. This book also draws on the
work of Claire Harman (Jane’s Fame) and Claire Tomalin (Jane Austen: A Life).
I must also credit Vic Sanborn, Laurel Ann Nattress and Julie Wakefield, authors
of the influential blogs Jane Austen’s World, AustenProse and AustenOnly. None
of these persons should be blamed for this book.
For reasons understandable only to myself, I decided to employ a trans-
Atlantic narrator, but who generally follows UK spelling and grammar.
As to Jane’s voice, please realize I’ve imagined a Jane Austen who’s been
observing the world for two centuries, who’s been online for a decade and who
now has a close friend, almost a sister, in her mid twenties. She’s read and
enjoyed Hemingway, Dickens, Chandler and Christie. She may not be the Jane
you were expecting.
Chronology
I borrow from a device employed by Stella Gibbons, author of Cold Comfort
Farm, who prefaced her book: “The action of the story takes place in the near
future.” The world of the AfterNet takes place in the recent past, but a past that
diverged from our reality in 1997. I choose to parallel and depart from our
timeline at my pleasure. This story takes place in 2011.
“It seems a great pity that they allowed her to
die a natural death”
Mark Twain
Jane lies in Winchester—blessed be her shade! /
Praise the Lord for making her,
and her for all she made! /
And while the stones of Winchester,
or Milsom Street, remain, /
Glory, love, and honour unto England’s Jane! /
From Rudyard Kipling’s “The Janeite”
The Real Jane Austen
Jane Austen died in 1817.* In her forty-one years alive, she published four
novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma,
and two were published posthumously, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. She
left Sanditon unfinished, and it promised to be quite different from her previous
works, which have been described and criticized as both romantic, dull, witty,
plotless, brilliant, complex, insightful, second only to Shakespeare and boring.
To millions of Janeites, however, the best way to describe her novels is only
—only six novels, plus two unfinished novels, and her Juvenilia (early works).
Her novels are third person, chiefly from the viewpoint of the heroine; they
always end happily with a marriage; they’re devoid of explicit sex but filled with
rakes, cads and bounders; and the plots are simply driven by two people clearly
meant for one another who still manage to deny their love for an entire book.
The reader is rewarded, usually after considerably more than 100,000 words,
with a single kiss (but only in the movie versions) and a wedding.
Jane was born to George and Cassandra Austen. Her father was a rector
(Church of England priest) of the parish of Steventon in Hampshire, a southern
English county. Jane had six brothers (James, George, Edward, Henry, Francis
and Charles) and a sister, who was also named Cassandra.
Jane never married, although shortly before her twenty-seventh birthday, she
famously agreed to Harris Bigg-Wither’s proposal and returned it the next day.
The only sure romance in her life was with Tom Lefroy, who at the time was
studying law under the sponsorship of a great uncle. The romance fell apart and
Jane shows no great sorrow in her letter to her sister: “At length the day is come
on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will
be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea.”
Most detect a sarcastic tone, although perhaps her arch words disguise a true
disappointment. Lefroy never proposed; it would have been an unsuitable match
for him and had they married, who can say whether Jane would have pursued her
career.
That career began early, encouraged by her father, his library and her perusal
of it. She began early versions of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and
Northanger Abbey while the family lived in Steventon, but in 1801 her father
decided to retire and the Reverend Austen and his wife and two daughters
moved to Bath in Somerset. The hot mineral baths of the resort town attracted
the fashionable and the infirm and the city was also a marketplace where parents
could hope to find their children suitable marriage partners.
For Jane, however, the move was a wrench from the home and the country
she loved and to a city that she grew to dislike. With his death, Mrs Austen and
her two daughters were in dire financial difficulties. Jane’s sister had income
from the bequest of a fiancé who died before they could marry, and Mrs Austen
had income from her family, but Jane had little to call her own. Fortunately her
brothers contributed to the upkeep of the Austen women, but they remained
largely homeless after George Austen’s death, constantly visiting friends and
relatives, including the homes of Edward Austen Knight. It was this same
Edward, the third child of George and Cassandra, who offered Chawton Cottage
as a home to the Austen women in 1809.
If you’re wondering about Edward’s last name, it came about after he was
adopted by wealthy relatives who saw in him the child they never had. Austen’s
novels also had several examples of children raised in absentia by wealthy
relatives (or relatively wealthier friends in the case of Jane Fairfax in Emma).
Whatever grief or disruption or relief this caused Jane’s parents, Edward’s
adoption provided an important safety net. Even before the death of Jane’s
father, they often visited Godmersham Park, the home of the Knight family, and
later Chawton House, Edward’s estate very near the cottage.
The offer of Chawton Cottage meant a return to Hampshire for the Austen
women and for Jane it meant a return to writing. She revised Sense and
Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and gave them their final titles. With the
financial help of her brother Henry, S&S was published in 1811. P&P followed
in 1813.
In her lifetime, all her novels were published anonymously, first attributed to
“By a Lady” and later as the author of the previous books. It wasn’t until
Persuasion and Northanger Abbey that her identity was acknowledged.
The choice of keeping her identity secret was largely her own. She did see
some financial success and critical acclaim in her lifetime, but her works lapsed
out of print after her death, until they were revived in 1832. Since then, they
have never been out of print and her fame has risen steadily. The Jane Austen
Society of the United Kingdom, started in 1947, and the Jane Austen Society of
North America in 1987, have contributed to her fame. Her novels have been
made into movies, television serials and even computer games. Many authors
have written continuations of her stories and have recast her characters as
vampires, zombie slayers and detectives.
vampires, zombie slayers and detectives.
* Jane lived during the reign of King George III and his son, George IV. The Regency period,
during which Jane’s novels were published, began in 1811, when George III was incapacitated
(just watch the movie The Madness of King George) and his son became Regent, and ended in
1820 with the death of George III, whence his son was crowned king.
