“We shouldn’t need a picture to prove that Austen was not always grouchy, or that she took her writing seriously. Nor do we need a picture to prove that she was once thirteen years old. But our reading of Austen has been visually augmented, so that we are used to reading her texts along with Colin Firth’s barely raised eyebrows and Gwyneth Paltrow’s furrowed brow. Of all writers, she is one that we would like to visualize accurately, in the half-belief that if we could just get a good look at her, we would be able to see something more of her world.”
The New Yorker on Jane Austen’s celebrity aura: how Blow-Up-style exposure frames our would-be thirteen-year-old Jane with some young-adult #realtalk
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