Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World [Hardcover]

An exhilarating look at the rise of Divine Jane's worldwide influence. --Literary Review

[A] deft, elegant exploration of the cult of all thing Austen.

[A] witty examination of [Austen's] rise to world domination.

Harman is the first to treat this fascinating subject in an accessible, lively manner unshackled by academic jargon.

Jane's Fame is a valuable and illuminating addition to the ranks of Austen mania.

Wonderful.. not only scholarly but indecently entertaining... her prose rings with good sense, affection and humour.

A fascinating compendium of absolutely everything relating to Austen...extraordinary

Deft, elegant ... a happy blend of critical insight and narrative bounce.

Rich, incisive.

Harman unpicks the cultural and sexual fantasies at the heart of Jane fandom with great skill.

Award-winning biographer Claire Harman traces the growth of Jane Austen's fame, the changing status of her work and what it has stood for - or has been made to stand for in English culture - in a wide-ranging study aimed at the general reader. This is a story of personal struggle, family intrigue, accident, advocacy and sometimes surprising neglect as well as a history of changing public tastes and critical practices. Starting with Austen's own experience as a beginning author (and addressing her difficulties getting published and her determination to succeed), Harman unfolds the history of how her estate was handled by her brother, sister, nieces and nephews, and goes on to explore the eruption of public interest in Austen in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the making of her into a classic English author in the twentieth century, the critical wars that erupted as a result and, lastly, her powerful influence on contemporary phenomena such as chick-lit, romantic comedy, the heritage industry and film.

Claire Harman's first book, a biography of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner (Chatto & Windus) won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize. Her subsequent biography of the eighteenth-century novelist, Fanny Burney (Harpercollins UK, 2000, Knopf US 2001) was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Her last book, Robert Louis Stevenson : A Life was published in hardcover in February 2005 by Harpercollins on both sides of the Atlantic to great critical acclaim in 2006.