Published in 2009
342 pages
Claire Harman began her career in publishing, at Carcanet Press and the poetry magazine PN Review, where she was co-ordinating editor.
Her first book, a biography of the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, was published in 1989 and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for ‘a writer of growing stature’ under the age of 35. She has since published biographies of Fanny Burney and Robert Louis Stevenson and edited works by Stevenson and Warner. She writes short stories for radio and publication and was runner-up for the V.S.Pritchett prize for short fiction in 2008. Her latest book is a mixture of biography and criticism, Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World.
Claire has taught English at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford and creative writing at Columbia University in New York City. She has appeared on radio and television and writes regularly for the literary press on both sides of the Atlantic, reviewing books, films, plays and exhibitions. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006.
What is this book about?
Jane’s Fame tells the fascinating story of Jane Austen’s renown, from the years of rejection the author faced during her lifetime to the global recognition and adoration she now enjoys. Almost two hundred years after her death, Austen remains a hot topic, constantly open to revival and reinterpretation and known to millions of people through film and television adaptations as much as through her books. In Jane’s Fame, Claire Harman gives us the complete biography―of both the author and her lasting cultural influence―making this essential reading for anyone interested in Austen’s life, works, and remarkably potent fame.
