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Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage by Caroline Jane Knight (Audio)

October 10, 2017 by

Source: publicist
Audible; 8+ hrs.
I am an Amazon Affiliate

Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage by Caroline Jane Knight, narrated by Alison Larkin, is a memoir of one of the last people to live in Chawton House — the home of Jane Austen — as part of a family.  Knight peppers her family stories with historical notes from the ancestors, the letters, and the stories she heard as a child, but she also incorporates the words of Jane Austen from her novels at the most opportune moments.  Readers will be delighted to learn how elements from her books were taken straight from her family’s experiences.

From the beginning readers know that Knight was forced from her home at age 17 due to financial distress.  You can imagine how being forced from an ancestral home would be disconcerting and lead her to distance herself from Jane Austen. But readers will want to learn how her life comes full circle and leads to the creation of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation.

Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage by Caroline Jane Knight, narrated by Alison Larkin, provides a unique look at Jane Austen’s ancestors and explores how family members many years removed can carry some of the same traits and interests.  Knight is a curious woman who loves to weave stories about her family members with those of Austen’s novels and real life.  She mirrors Jane’s streak of independence, which readers have found so compelling about Elizabeth Bennet.

RATING: Quatrain

About the Author:

Caroline Jane Knight shares more than Jane Austen’s name and DNA. As a direct descendant of Jane’s brother, Edward Knight, Caroline is the last of the Austen Knight family to grow up at Chawton House on the estate where her fifth great-aunt Jane Austen lived and enjoyed the most productive period of her writing career. Caroline explored the same places around Chawton House and its grounds as Jane did, dined at the same table in the same dining room, read in the same library and shared the same dream of independence.

Filed Under: audiobooks, challenges, memoir, New Authors Challenge, nonfiction, Read in 2017, review copy, reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Mailbox Monday #448

October 9, 2017 by

Mailbox Monday, created by Marcia at To Be Continued, formerly The Printed Page, has a permanent home at its own blog. To check out what everyone has received over the last week, visit the blog and check out the links. Leave yours too.

Also, each week, Leslie, Martha, and I will share the Books that Caught Our Eye from everyone’s weekly links.

Here’s what I received:

It’s Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability by Kelly Davio, which I purchased and is on tour with Poetic Book Tours.

With equal parts wit and empathy, lived experience and cultural criticism, Kelly Davio’s It’s Just Nerves: Notes on a Disability explores what it means to live with an illness in our contemporary culture, whether at home or abroad.

Jane & Me: My Austen Heritage by Caroline Jane Knight, audible review copy from the publicist.

Caroline Jane Knight is the last of the Austen Knight family to grow up at Chawton House, the sixteenth-century English manor house on the ancestral estate where Jane Austen lived and wrote. Caroline ate at the same dining table, read in the same library, explored the same country lanes and shared the same dreams of independence as Jane Austen did.

But when she was seventeen, Caroline and her family were forced to leave the home her family had lived in for centuries. Heartbroken and determined to leave all things Austen behind her, this is the story of Caroline’s journey from an idyllic childhood in which she baked cakes with her Granny for Jane Austen tourists, through personal crisis and success to her eventual embrace of her Austen heritage and the creation of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation.

A contemporary and dramatic story, it is also a major contribution to the library of works about Jane Austen, including information thrillingly new to Jane Austen’s readers and scholars.

What goodies did you get?

Filed Under: mailbox monday, meme Tagged With: , , ,