Jane Austen for Dummies

You may be surprised to learn how much you don't know about Jane Austen. Glance over the Table of Contents of Jane Austen for Dummies and you can't help but envy Professor Joan Klingel Ray's students. She manages to present in an informative and very entertaining manner Jane Austen's life, works, literary predecessors, legacy, and so much more. This book is for everyone who reads Jane Austen - and for those who don't. Think Jane Austen is only for ladies who sip tea? Think Jane Austen favored the aristocracy? Think Jane Austen lived a sad, lonely life and never traveled? Read this book and discover the truth of the matter. You can buy countless books about Jane Austen and spend the next decade or so reading them, or you can get just this one.

This is an outstanding book. I was worried that a book "For Dummies" might be too basic but I learned that the "for dummies" applies to the easy-to-understand style of writing rather than a low level of scholarship. The author, Joan Ray, is an internationally recognized Austen scholar who has done a marvelous job of placing Jane's work in context. I did not understand, from a 21st century viewpoint, many aspects of the novels but this book shows they made perfect sense in Janes's time considering the then current customs, social mores, economy etc. I recommend the book unhestitatingly!

When Shakespeare wrote "Much Ado About Nothing" his audiences were well aware that the word "nothing" was Elizabethan slang for female genitalia. Like Shakespears' audiences Jane Austen's Regency readers had a decided advantage over modern readers in that they would have understood the political and class dimensions of her characterizations and plots. Why did Jane Austen send Lydia and Wickham to Brighton instead of to Weymouth? Professor Joan Klingel Ray's amazing "Jane Austen for Dummies" answers this question and many more, and in so doing gives us the information to enjoy the novels like we were Regency readers. With humor and wit Professor Ray explains the nuances of daily life in Jane Austen's time that help us to appreciate even more this extraordinary novelist's command of the written word.

I found this book to be really a great read. It is a good, solid, reference book. There is so much about Jane Austen that is known but this is one place where you can get a lot of information in one place. For non-Janites it is a great introduction to some of the things about Jane. All in all I would recommend this to everyone Janites and non-Janites. You will enjoy it.

I hate the name of this series, but this volume by Joan Klingel Ray, president of the Jane Austen Society of North America is a terrific, clear, concise, and inviting set of explanations for all of those questions that newer readers of Austen have about her world: Why doesn't Elizabeth Bennet just get a job? Why will Mrs. Bennet have to leave Longbourn if Mr. Bennet dies? How rich IS Darcy? Plus, because Ray's learning is so deep, the chapter on manners, for instance, is framed not by vague ideas of "well, we all want to behave nicely, don't we?" but by Castiglione and the translations of it into Latin and English. This kind of learning is in evidence in every chapter. I've been reading Austen since I was 13--more than 35 years--and I find new information in this volume. Plus, it's fun to read sections and see just how much I already knew. For instance, do you know how to navigate via the Tube and trains to the Austen sites in the countryside? I didn't. Dr. Ray tells all. I do love a clear explanation! Pamela Regis, Professor of English McDaniel College Westminster, MD