Like her much-loved heroine Emma Woodhouse, Jane Austen ‘played and sang’. Music occupied a central role in her life, and she made brilliant use of it in her books to illuminate characters’ personalities and highlight the contrasts between them.
Until recently, our knowledge of Austen’s musical inclinations was limited to the recollections of relatives who were still in their youth when she passed away. But with the digitisation of music books from her immediate family circle, a treasure trove of evidence has emerged. Delving into these books, alongside letters and other familial records, She played and sang unveils a previously unknown facet of Austen’s world.
This insightful work not only uncovers the music closely associated with Austen, but also unravels her musical connections with family and friends, revealing the intricate ties between her fiction and the melodies she performed. With these revelations, Austen’s musical legacy comes to life, granting us a deeper understanding of her artistic prowess and the influences that shaped her literary masterpieces.
Table of Content
Introduction
1 The Jane Austen music manuscripts
2 Jane Austen’s musical relationships
3 Jane Austen and the music of the French Revolution
4 ‘These happy effects on the character of the British sailor’: family life in sea songs of the late Georgian period
5 Jane Austen, Thomas Arne and Georgian musical theatre
6 Jane Austen and British song
7 Juvenile songs and lessons: music culture in Jane Austen’s teenage years
8 Marianne and Willoughby, Lucy and Colin: betrayal, suffering, death and the poetic image
Conclusion
Index
About the author
Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in English at Flinders University. She has published and presented internationally on Jane Austen, and as a singer she has curated programmes of music from Austen’s personal collection since 2007. She has appeared on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s
The Book Show and
The Minefield as an expert on Austen. Her most recent books are
Matthew Flinders: The Man behind the Map and
Listening to Iris Murdoch: Music, Sounds, and Silences (both 2022).
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