Jane Austen according to her Biographies and her Letters
This webpage functions as the appendix to Chapter 3. However, as the biographies are central to a general understanding, other chapters might also refer to this chapter.
My starting point for the chapter on biographies was Austen’s own letters in Le Faye’s book. At the back of it there is a list of Principal Published Sources from which I selected twelve publications. These publications in their turn led to the following selection of reading materials. The literature which proved to be helpful is in a green box and those in a yellow box were of no interest.
As a reasonable Jane Austen-related library is available at my fingertips purchased over the last two years, I already owned a large selection of the required books. So, my only 'method' applied here is a simple search of the indexes usually located at the back of the volumes.
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It is worth mentioning how easy it is in this day and age to obtain a good, personal research library without extravagant costs. One can sit in one’s private office and by a few clicks search the literature available around the world and have them delivered at your doorstep.
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The vendor sites visited for this purpose are:
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Amazon.uk: https://www.amazon.co.uk/
Here you can compare prices and quality of second-hand books; in my library some have had the price of 0.01£ plus shipping (shipping here is a little bit more expensive than ordinarily). They also offer new editions.
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Biblio: https://biblio.co.uk/
Biblio calls themselves 'EPIC' which stands for ‘Environment, Profit, Independence and Community’; BiblioWorks is a 501(c)3 nonprofit company. They use their profits each year ‘to provide secure jobs, comprehensive benefits, charitable donations and successful reinvestments in technology, research and advertising.’
- AbeBooks.co.uk: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/
This is a ‘gateway’ to thousands of professional booksellers from around the world.
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Locally in Denmark, one can also find good bargains in DBA, Gul&Gratis, and various facebook forums such as bøger! køb, salg og bytte, 2680 solrød - bøger - køb salg og bytte and brugte bøger humaniora (kua) etc. etc.
I can recommend them all.
An illustration of my work method. I used the 'chain-based' strategy, where one book 'recommends' the next.
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The books in the green boxes provided interesting information and those in yellow boxes were of no interest.
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As can be seen from the illustration, suggestions for further reading were obtained along the way.