FRAGMENTS OF GENIUS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 796, 22 October 1954, Page 13

FRAGMENTS OF GENIUS

THE OXFORD ILLUSTRATED JANE AUSTEN, Vol. Vi, Minor Works, edited by R. W. Chapman; Oxford University Press, English pride 21/-.. ° "| HE Oxford Illustrated Edition of Jane Austen is completed with a collection of sketches, fragments, verses and prayers dating from her ‘teens almost to the day of her death. While one can claim little literary merit for most of them, and although most of them have been published piecemeal before, the scholar and the lay enthusiast have now to hand documents which supplement and amplify the accepted canon. The Juvenilia, which Jane Austen ‘was at pains to preserve and work over until comparatively late, and named by her "Volumes the First, Second and Third," make one realise the extreme tolerance that a large family. endowed with a precocious literary genius, must exercise towards the high-spirited and farcical effusions so generously dedicated to each member in turn. There are evident a cast of humour, a trick of phrase, even a tone of voice which conjure up the background implicit in her later work. Those who have joined in adulation of her decorum may suffer a slight shock to discover her "partial to the Roman Catholic religion" and young ladies who "drink a little too much," To this efflorescence of high spirits are added two fragments belonging to the middle years: "Lady Susan." an: unsatisfactory excursion into the epistolary style; and "The Watsons." more mature, more instinct with personal suffering and experience, and potentially greater in range. "Sanditon," written in the year of her death, is an interesting social document which must remain a tantalising possibility. The collection impresses one most, perhaps, as evidence of her development in technique, range and control. For her there was, as she recognised, only one form and one method of treatment: within these limitations she experimented and succeeded, and her collec-

tion of the opinions of friends on her work reflect her pride in achievement. Although her metier lay in comedy, and her eye was keen to detect the foibles of others, her prayers show her, as one suspected, sane, pious and self-critical. And one cannot but pay tribute to the devotion of Dr. Chapman in compiling this difficult and illuminating volume. |

J.R.

Tye