Austen Series Released as Audiobooks
I haven’t written often about my published work. My sense is that subscribers would rather read about the research behind my writing, new research that may end up in my fiction or nonfiction, or other matters of interest related to the Regency era, women writers, or literature generally.
Today is a day, however, when I have no hesitation to sound the trumpets. My trilogy of historical fiction, The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, has just been released in audiobook form on Amazon and Audible. This series, built on the life of the British author, shows life realistically for an intelligent, passionate woman of character in the early 1800s.
Audiobooks are available here:
List price is $11.99, though Prime and Audible members can receive significant discounts.
Historical fiction based on Austen’s life explores the seven “missing” years of which little is known of her experiences.
The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen is a trilogy that reimagines the life of England’s most famous female author by asking what really might have happened during the period 1802-1809, when virtually nothing is known of her doings. What was at the heart of the oft-misreported stories of a failed marriage proposal and rumors of a doomed love affair? Why did her sister, Cassandra, destroy most of Jane’s letters from this time?
The trilogy traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions. Though light-hearted in places, the series provides a psychological examination of an intelligent, sensitive woman facing the deepest matters of the soul and contending with the heart-rending circumstances that were part of almost every woman’s life in Regency England.
Along the way, Austen becomes immersed in the major issues of the Regency Era: technological advances that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution; slavery, which fueled English prosperity; antagonism between aristocrats and the rising mercantile class; and the impacts of the never-ending war with France on English citizens.
At the end of the series, Austen returns to her known life at Chawton cottage in Hampshire, embarking on a concentrated period of literary effort that gave us the works that have made her reputation.
In a starred review, Blueink says that my series places “a very human Jane into a vibrant, turbulent England that is seeking new ideas but also fighting the Napoleonic Wars. … [The author] captures the energy of the times, while also writing with the irony and sly humor of Austen herself.” Foreword CLARION reviews calls the story “an imaginative journey of the soul. … These fascinating people step off the pages in lifelike form.”
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The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen is available in print form from Jane Austen Books and Amazon. A “boxed set” that combines all three in an e-book format is also available.
My book Jane Austen and the Creation of Modern Fiction: Six Novels in “a Style Entirely New” investigates her development as a writer and shows how her innovations as a prose stylist set the course for modern fiction. It is available from Jane Austen Books at a special low price.
My newest, non-Austen, work is Running Against the Wind: A Black Arkansan’s Pursuit of His Dream, which describes how a black man’s pursuit of happiness remains difficult and even dangerous in America today. Available from Amazon.