Jane Austen is one of a select band of writers whose output has generated a mountain of literary criticism. As well as this, her work has also given rise to sequels of varying quality and numerous film adaptations. Other scholars have produced in‐depth biographies and histories of her family life and private life, or written books on the impact of Jane Austen on modern society.
Although every avenue of Austen‐related criticism seems to have been explored, Deirdre Le Faye has come up with something different, which may prove to be of great value to Austen scholars in the future. It is, essentially, her card catalogue, which contains 30 years of research, produced in book format. The Chronology complements Le Faye's previous work, Jane Austen: A Family Record, which gives a detailed narrative of the ancestry of the various branches of the Austen and Knight families. While the Family Record reads as a history, this new book is, more simply, a straightforward catalogue of events taken from letters, diary entries, notes in old pocket books, county records and many other original sources. These have been painstakingly arranged in chronological order to record the movements, activities and fates of the family members and friends of the family. All events, little or great, are recorded here, from small purchases made, to the publications of the first novels, and the births, marriages and deaths in the family. No event is accorded more precedence than others: Austen's own birth is tucked away in the last of the entries for the year 1775 amid details of George Austen's banking transactions and details of a party in Kensington.
The volume begins with a prologue containing a brief history of the Austen and Leigh families, with biographical information on Austen's paternal and maternal ancestors. A list of abbreviations is provided, as each entry, refers to everyone by their initials and is also tagged with an abbreviated description of the source. The end of the volume contains bibliographies of printed and unpublished sources, several family trees, and an index of personal names.
The entries themselves begin on 20 May 1660 with the birth of Jane Austen's great‐great‐great grandfather Francis, and end on 19 July 2003 with the opening of Chawton House Library for the study of early English women writers. In between these dates, readers have the opportunity to browse four centuries of familial events. Various Austen family histories already exist, but what makes this one unique is that rather than having to pick out facts from a historical narrative, one can simply glance through indexed entries and locate the major events of Austen's life, amidst the other daily details of servants coming and going, news of illnesses, a particular fowl which was eaten at a particular dinner, and the movements of all concerned, from Chawton, to London, Winchester, Oxford and Bath and back again.
What is interesting is that using these indexed entries the reader can trace certain strands through her life, for example following the publication of Pride and Prejudice from the moment it was finished to the newspaper reviews and reactions of her family. The months leading to her death, followed through brief extracts from diary entries and letters flying back and forth, are curiously moving. One can track Austen's deterioration through the comments of her family, before her death on 18 July 1817 which is listed in the index under an entry from Mary Lloyd Austen's pocket‐book: “Jane breathed her last ½ after four in the Morn: only Cass & I were with her Henry came”.
This book is a good reference source for those studying Austen in depth. Casual readers and school‐age students may prefer a straightforward historical narrative, but university students and those embarking on detailed research, either on Austen or on this particular era, will find this very useful in placing the well‐known events of Austen's life in a wider context.
