An Oxford University academic and one of her former students have become embroiled in a public row over the contents of a new biography of Jane Austen.
By Jon Swaine writing in The Daily Telegraph, 15 March 2009
Professor Kathryn Sutherland (pic right)
Professor Kathryn Sutherland, an Austen expert, has said that the new book, by Claire Harman, an award-winning biographer, uses her ideas without adequately crediting them.
Harman has described her book, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World, as "a new way of looking at this perennially fascinating author".
It spans "Austen's own experience as a beginning author" to "her powerful influence on contemporary phenomena such as chick-lit, romantic comedy, the heritage industry and film", she said.
Her publishers have described it as "the first book about Jane Austen to dissect the industry around her", hailing it as "a completely original approach to one of Britain's most enduring popular novelists"
Yet according to Prof Sutherland, far from breaking new ground, Jane's Fame is in fact similar to an academic study, Jane Austen's Textual Lives, from Aeschylus to Bollywood, that she published in 2005 after 10 years of research.
It examined the transition of Austen's work from its roots, through being accepted into the canon of English literature, to providing the basis of modern commercial entertainment.
She said the dispute centred on "three informal family biographies of Jane written by her nieces", which she had pieced together to form a different picture of Austen to that propagated since her death by her publishers and family. She claims her findings feature significantly in Harman's new work.
"It is rather sad", Prof Sutherland said. "She was my student and we had kept in touch. We are not in contact now."
Link here to the Telegraph to read the full story.
PS - The book is published in the UK on 2 April by Canongate Books
No comments:
Post a Comment