Once you start it, you won't be able to switch it off!
How does it compare to similar audio books?
Excellent
How does it compare to audio works by the same author?
Excellent
Advantages:
Austen's sharp, irreverent wit and keen eye already evident in the young writer .
Disadvantages:
Too short !
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
At the tender age of sixteen, Jane Austen ("Pride and Prejudice", "Emma" etc.) set upon writing her own version of the history of England. Oh, dear reader, we should all be so glad that she did, for today we can enjoy her delightful parody of the history of the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, the Stuarts and the Tudors.
Witness the simultaneously self-important and self-mocking title page of the work:
"THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
From the Reign of Henry the 4th to the Death of Charles the 1st
By a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian ________
To Miss Austen, eldest daughter of the Revd. George Austen,
this Work is inscribed with all due respect by
The Author
N.B. There will be very few Dates in this History"
And thus, the tone of the book is set.
Jane was inspired by Oliver Goldsmith's gravely serious, 4-volume "History of England", a set of books that was required reading for every English child at the time. Yes, Jane's version is chock-full of inaccuracies, illogicalities and personal biases, but all are delivered with wickedly delicious, irreverent humor. Already her sharp wit and keen eye are in much evidence in this brief, early work. Read, for instance, what the young historian has to say about Edward the 4th:
"This Monarch was famous only for his Beauty & his Courage…. His Wife was Elizabeth Woodville, a Widow, who, poor Woman! was afterwards confined in a Convent by that Monster of Iniquity & Avarice Henry the 7th. One of Edward's Mistresses was Jane Shore, who has had a play written about her, but it is a tragedy & therefore not worth reading. Having performed all these noble actions, his Majesty died, & was succeeded by his son."
And there's more that runs in a related vein about other similarly worthy royal personages.
A lovely facsimile of Jane's own notebook (from Volume the Second) with its elegant script in ink and hilarious little portraits done by Jane's sister, Cassandra, takes up most of the book's scant sixty pages. Cassandra depicts these unfortunate monarchs as ordinary citizens from the late 18th century, with quite a few looking decidedly ruffian in character and dress. Consider her unique rendition of Good Queen Bess—why, I've never seen anything like it in any historical portrait before!
Jane confesses to a "[partiality] to the roman catholic religion" [sic], and later states that her sole purpose in writing "History" was to prove once and for all, the innocence of that unfairly maligned (and unjustly beheaded) Queen of Scotland, Elizabeth's cousin, Mary.
Writer A. S. Byatt enlightens us on Jane Austen, the young writer, in the excellent Introduction, and Deirdre Le Faye provides notes on the text and the printed transcript. The elegant yet playful dust jacket has a cream-colored background, with neat letters in type and script, and the border artwork along the spine is a tapestry of brown leaves with a lazily twisted lavender ribbon as accent on the front.
While this amusing little book would make a fine gift for a teenage daughter, niece or granddaughter (who might just feel inspired to write something of a similar nature on reading it), Jane's "History" will surely delight just about anyone of almost any age as well.
------------------------ Notes:
My only complaint about "History" remains impossible to address: the book is too short, and leaves you craving more!
I confess to a shameful ignorance of much of England's history myself, but still enjoyed this little book Very, Very Much despite that admitted deficiency. You need not be a history major to find much to please you here.
Be ready to elicit stares from people around you when perusing this in public, since outbursts of hearty laughter are a common side effect.
------------------------- Book Details:
Hardcover, 60 pages. Published in 1993 by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina (a Division of Workman Publishing Company, Inc.). Price at amazon.co.uk.: USD 14.95 GBP 9.56
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