Scouring novels for facts

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By

BECOMING JANE AUSTEN

By Jon Spence

Hambledon and London, $29.95, 294 pages, illus.

Jon Spence is an expert on wills. Prior to writing this book, a fastidious biography that bears the imprint of one who knows how money and families mingle or collide over generations, he was editor of "A Century of Wills from the Jane Austen Family."

"Becoming Jane Austen" begins with a discussion of wills and readers should take note. Though these pages have quiet intimations of joy, wit, passion, skepticism, hope, perception -- all that generations of readers have loved about Jane Austen's work -- what dominates here are facts, lots of facts, many arguable assumptions and one very jarring approach to history.

To be fair, choosing to write Jane Austen's life story requires no small amount of courage. For one thing, there is not exactly a dearth of material about the famously reclusive novelist. Countless biographies have proliferated since her death in 1817, notably Claire Tomalin's fun-filled "Jane Austen: A Life" (1992) and Park Honan's thorough, engaging "Jane Austen: Her Life" (1989), and the flow shows no sign of abating. On this basis alone, a would-be biographer might be tempted to plough a less cluttered field.

An even more daunting circumstance is that Austen's much beloved sister Cassandra burned or excised portions of the author's letters, and no diary exists. As two centuries of frustrated historians can attest, Austen is the most maddening of subjects, an immortal without a paper trail. Unless you count the novels.

Ah, yes, the novels.