Q&A with Janet Todd

 

 

 

Janet Todd is the author of the new book Living with Jane Austen. Her many other books include Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden. She is a former president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, and is an honorary fellow of Lucy Cavendish and Newnham Colleges. She is also an emerita professor of the University of Aberdeen.

 

Q: What inspired you to write this new book about Jane Austen?

 

A: I was asked to edit a Collector’s Edition of Jane Austen for Cambridge University Press to celebrate the 250th birthday year.

 

I agreed if I could include all the manuscript works as well as the novels: the unfinished fiction, teenage stories, funny poems  and literary spoofs. They agreed and the edition is now in eight attractive volumes with my prefaces and general notes; it was delayed by a hacking at the Press (!) and will appear in May. 

 

For the edition I read again right through all Austen’s work --and it was an absolute treat. I shared my enthusiasm to the commissioning editor who suggested I write a short personal book about my reaction to Austen now and over many decades across continents and cultural changes.

 

It was tremendous fun writing quickly, spontaneously, and without the apparatus of scholarship. It was also fun to revisit my younger self reading Austen at very different moments from the mid 20th-century until now.

 

Q: The actor Miriam Margolyes said of your new book, “In this gentle, witty, semi-memoir, Janet Todd shows us why the novels of Jane Austen should matter to all of us now.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I was delighted with Miriam’s comment. I believe she’s right when she says the novels of Jane Austen “should matter to all of us now.” 

 

Austen is embedded in her own time, of course, but her novels catch something timeless, something relevant to any period, because she investigates human nature, human love, and human folly. She also shows the difficulty of living well with other people—and reveals to us the need for tolerance.

 

Q: In the book’s introduction, you write, “I'm now twice the age Jane Austen was when she died and I'm still listening to girls who will always be twenty.” Can you say more about that?

 

A: I return to my point about Austen’s amazing ability to capture something essential about humanity. Here I am four times the age of Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice; yet her dilemma and  her thoughts are still real to me—and I think to everyone who reads about her.

 

The knowledge that you never will grasp everything or understand anyone completely but that to laugh at absurdities in others AND yourself is what Elizabeth learns and it feels as relevant to me now as when I too was 20!

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I hope my renewed love of Jane Austen will be infectious. But I guess anyone reading your blog will already share this love!

 

So I hope I’ll convey my sense of Austen as a useful (if always slightly ironic) guide in life, not in any prescriptive way but in gently directing us to think before acting and speaking, to be a little reticent, to keep cheerful—and to enjoy walking in any weather!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m now reading the historical books and spinoffs I had no time to read when I was working on the edition and on Living with Jane Austen.

 

I’m also thinking further on the topic that ran through the book—Austen’s depiction of the natural environment -- the very different way her characters looked at external nature from the way we do now. I’m noticing the difference and thinking about our own attitude to nature so thoroughly exploited between her time and ours.  

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I ended my book by quoting Jane Austen’s fellow novelist Jane West who advised the woman writer to be quiet and stop writing when she grew old. I guess I’d like to urge all my fellow scribblers not to take this advice.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Janet Todd.