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Article: A TRIP INTO JANE AUSTEN'S WORLD
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- January 16, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1987 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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JANE AUSTEN, by Tony Tanner. Harvard University Press. 291
pp. $20 ($8.95, paperback).
The books I read least, since my formal education ended, are
books about books. So many of them seem to be no more than clever
mimicry of other books about books, like guests at an eternal
academic sherry party I haven't been invited to for ages. To put it
crassly, they are full of names it no longer serves me to drop.
But every once in a while, a book of this secondary species
comes along that is really a primary guide -- like Tony Tanner's
"Jane Austen." Tanner teaches English at Cambridge University, and
he made his name as a writer with a book about books about
adultery. Quite rightly, ...