Jane and Dorothy: A True Tale of Sense and Sensibility

by Marian Veevers

Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth were born just four years apart, in the 1770s, in a world torn between heady revolutionary ideas and fierce conservatism, and both were influenced by the Romantic ideals of Dorothy’s brother, William Wordsworth, and his friends. Jane and Dorothy compares their upbringing and education, home lives and loves and, above all, their emotional and creative worlds. Original insights include a new discovery of serious depression suffered by Dorothy Wordsworth, a new and crucial discovery about Dorothy and William’s relationship, and a critical look at the myths surrounding the man who stole Jane’s heart. This is the first time these two lives have been examined together.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, British Literature, Biography Memoir, Literature, Womens

380 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2018

About the author

Marian Veevers lives in the Lake District, just five miles from Grasmere, and works for the Wordsworth Trust. She lectures on Dorothy Wordsworth for the Wordsworth Trust and is the author of several novels set in Georgian England under the pseudonym Anna Dean, including Bellfield Hall and A Gentleman of Fortune.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced ebook in exchange for an honest review.

I REALLY need to start paying attention to the descriptions of books. I saw Jane Austen's name and requested it as quick as possible. I wondered "How did it escape me that Jane Austen was friends with the sister of William Wordsworth? Well, the truth is THEY NEVER MET. Say Whaaat???

After 6 chapters, I threw my hands up in the air and decided I have so many other books to read.

[Sophia · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been my goal to increase my intake of non-fiction into my reading diet so I snapped up the opportunity to read two bios in one book. Selecting Jane and Dorothy was not a real challenge, more of a dipping my pinky toe in because... full disclosure? I will read pretty much anything about Jane Austen so this was a totally 'have her cake and eat it, too' pick.

But, that said, it was actually seeing Austen sharing pages with great English poet, William Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy, that really grabbed my attention. I am sadly lacking in poet love and know next to nothing about either Wordsworth so this was an opportunity.

The author formatted the book in a familiar biographical fashion. She started with the family history for both women who were born four years apart in different parts of England, but into the same class. From there she compares and contrasts their earlier years right along to their deaths. Behind the narration-style main body are appendixes with poems mentioned, a book list for those consulted our used in research, and finally, a helpful index.

The author leans heavily on her subtitle theme of Sense and Sensibility all the way through. Jane is 'Sense' and Dorothy is 'Sensibility'. As a reader, I learned to not get carried away with this dichotomy because many times Jane acted with sensibility and Dorothy with sense. And, there are many times that the source data just does not give one enough to know more than they said or did something, but not the motivation or emotion behind it. I thought the author was fair when she posed her own surmises.

I felt the book delved into the ladies' lives equitably and presented them as fully fleshed out people instead of goddesses on pedestals. I've not read all that is out there on Jane Austen, but when I do, an author/scholar likes to take a specific approach and line up sources to back this up. I found it refreshing to see an author hang more neutral and show that there is quite a bit of scope to the imagination, shall we say. Austen is open and warm among her family and close friends, but generally manages to show a colder, even haughtier side, to others. She loves family, but she isn't afraid to make her displeasure known. As to Dorothy Wordsworth, this was my first encounter about her life, but I sensed the same cautious approach not to treat her as only this or only that. She's an emotional lady who is more open among her family and friends, but is barely noted by outsiders as more than a nice lady.

And, that leads me to the fact, that I found this book engaging because tucked in among the familiar were neat little nuances (again, this is in respect to Austen with whom I'm familiar though its likely true of Wordsworth's side, too). The author makes a point about Austen taking pot shots at people, but following it up with humor and wit so it soothes the sting. I had to chuckle of an example brought out of how Austen presented her newly engaged brother with her recent finished stories about three sisters all going for rich marriages (Edward, her brother is a prize as the Knight heir and his wife, Elizabeth is one of three sisters out seeking a brilliant match). The author also spotlights and speculates about Austen's seeming cool relationship with her own mother like they are chalk and cheese. In Dorothy's life, the author takes a stab at exploring a dark possibility that Dorothy and her beloved brother had an incestuous relationship. For and against are presented through the testament of people at the time. There is a discussion of what sort of health issue took up the end of Dorothy's life- was it severe depression or dementia?

A strong theme of women's history was not ignored. A modern reader will shudder at some of the Georgian ideas about women at the time and have a whole new appreciation for what the pair of these women and others were up against when they defied convention in their lives and their literary work. Dorothy acted out a more outwardly outrageous rebellion than Jane when she left the protection of her uncle's to join a scandalous brother, but Jane rejected perfectly eligible marriage proposals that would have instantly changed her status and financial situation likely for her stance about marrying for love and a strong inclination to write.

As to writing, Jane is a novelist and Dorothy is a poet and journalist. Austen was published during her own lifetime while Dorothy only saw a couple poems published in with her brother's and the bulk of her work was published decades later. There are nice discussions about their work and how their lives and environments played a role in their written work.

All in all, I wouldn't say I was riveted or always agreed with the author's direction, but I thought it was a fabulous job of pulling together source information, good decisions on what to include, and gave me a well-rounded picture of both women as people and as writers. I would recommend it to those who want a good piece of women's history, historical bio, better knowledge of one or both ladies, or even for those who generally prefer historical fiction, but want a non-fic now and then.

I rec'd this book from Net Galley to read in exchange for an honest review.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marian Veevers interprets the lives of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth showing the vulnerable legal, social and family positions of women in Georgian England. Both had talents that had to lay dormant in favor of brothers, who in theory would achieve for the family on the assumption that the brothers would take care of them.

I don’t know how these women stood it. They had no choices and their behavior down to their clothes, posture and personality had to follow a proscribed norm. How they ever made it through the teen age years is a mystery. An unmarried woman was a guest in her "own" home.

Austen was dependent on a father who was neither interested in her future nor a good manager of the family’s limited resources. Upon his death she was beholden to a brother (who “on her behalf” signed with a publisher who held her work for 6 years) who blithely moved her here and there for his convenience. Her mother is distant (probably long since caving to the system) and never advocates for her. Veevers shows how Austen’s prose expressed the feelings that could never surface in real life. She shows how this awareness grew from her earliest work: Sense and Sensibility to her last: Emma.

Wordsworth’s situation was more complex. Veevers draws a portrait of a brother and sister in a romantic, but chaste, love. She edits, copies and enjoys nature in a free thinking threesome (Dorothy, brother William and Samuel Coleridge). She sacrifices for her brother’s talent (but what are her other options?) and given the social and physical constraints of their love, helps to find him a wife. As children come along, she makes sacrifices and seems to live as a ghost in her brother’s household. Veevers, who has read her journals and travel writing (unpublished in her lifetime) finds her talent worthy of her brother’s.

This book clearly shows situation of women under primogeniture and all that goes it. Younger brothers did not fare well, but for the sisters, is was marriage (which had as many pitfalls as not marrying) or crumbs from the family. Recent biographies show how this played out in the lives of women similarly entrapped in this period: Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of notable women: Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley; and Lady Byron and Her Daughters . Through the Victorian years, not much seemed to have changed even in free-thinking households: Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution;.

The system has persisted through generations. In more modern times disinherited women,(further disadvantaged, as compared to brothers, by the denial of education), had a better shot at turning it around. Two good examples are Pamela Churchill Harriman ( Life of the Party: The Biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman), Bill Clinton’s most effective fundraiser and supporter and Grace Coddington (Grace: A Memoir) Creative Director at Vogue magazine. Isabella Blow (Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blowescape) is an example of the emotional baggage of the system.

The book is meaty, but not an easy read. Sometimes you have to go back to see if something was there, for instance, what became of the Scottish travel journal, was it published? (casually mentioned at the end). A name, long before mentioned, can reappear (good thing the index works). There are no drawings, photos or illustrations. The contrast in “sense” and “sensibility” is referenced in different places, but a more appropriate subtitle would relate the theme of the role of women in Georgian England.

[Brian Willis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though ostensibly a dual biography of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth, this book is not actually a traditional literary biography. It's a look at the domesticity of Jane and Dorothy and how societal expectations of the Regency age constricted them and how they rebelled against that.

Written by an employee of the Wordsworth Trust, it reads like it - in a good sense. Veevers clearly knows her details of domestic life and compares and contrasts these two lives in some interesting ways. Dorothy's life in particular is thrown into clearer focus. Veevers asserts that Dorothy was in love with William, which is a controversial position to take for modern sensibilities, but the relationship was clearly quite extraordinary. She also tries to paint the two heroines as representative of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, with Jane closer to Elinor and Dorothy to Marianne.

Worth a read for those who want to more fully understand the domestic obligations and expectations for women like Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this book shared by several Booktubers in their Jane Austen July TBRs and it caught my attention immediately. I'm sure why exactly, but I am glad I read it. I knew almost nothing about William Wordsworth (who features a lot in the book) and even less about his devoted sister Dorothy. I know quite a lot about Jane Austen, but putting her life side by side with her contemporary, Dorothy, was illuminating about Jane's life, her inner life, her novels, and the Georgian society in which both women lived the majority (Dorothy) or all (Jane) of their lives.

Jane was my favorite going in and she remains my favorite after finishing this. At times, I had to work hard to feel any sympathy for Dorothy. She remains a mystery. She was both unconventional and conventional. She lived with her brother William for nearly her whole adult life, but in doing so, she retained the traditional roles of a woman at the time: the homemaker, of sorts. And she seemed content, even jealous of her role, and didn't want anyone to usurp it, particularly William's wife Mary. She seems to have grown more conventional as she grew older, which I found sad, because she seems to have had a brilliance for narrative nonfiction, what we would call memoir today, and was involved in her 20s in the "Concern" with William and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which was what they called their threesome talks about philosophy, poetry, art, beauty, nature, etc. I'm sure Dorothy's journals are worth reading, so I'm sure I'll circle back around to her at some point.

The thing that struck me about William and Jane, in particular, is how uncertain their lives were, even though they were geniuses at poetry and fiction. They still had to wrestle with their callings, with money, with difficult family relationships, stormy friendships, precarious living situations, and more. The fact that they wrote what they did shows the hand of God throughout their lives. It was very striking in this book.

I hadn't realized that Wordsworth didn't publish much of his poetry until the end of Jane's life, so it's not clear that Jane read any of his poetry, though she certainly read his contemporaries. It's likely, but not entirely clear because there is a lot about Jane's life that is still a mystery. The biggest argument for it is in Mansfield Park because Fanny is Austen's most Romantic heroine and has a picture of Tintern Abbey in her bed/sitting room. Secondly is Captain Benwick, that ardent lover of melancholy poetry, in Persuasion.

This book described so eloquently how vulnerable women like Dorothy and Jane were in the Georgian era. While they came from gentry families, their parents were not able to provide them with dowries or regular incomes outside the family home. Both Dorothy and Jane were forced to accept the hospitality of family members. It was very common for family members, especially brothers, in the Georgian era to provide for their sisters who never married or married late, but this meant the women had very little freedom of movement or autonomy. They were often subject to the whims of their benefactors, which happened to both Jane and Dorothy. The clincher was that genteel women had little chance of employment that was respectable. A complete catch-22.

This shed light on three things for me with Jane and her writing, especially. First, I realize now how montrous the beginning of Sense and Sensibility is with John and Fanny Dashwood refusing to do anything to support John's widowed stepmother and half-sisters. Everyone in their society would have known exactly what John should have done. Even if he didn't provide them with money, he should have seen them safely housed. Instead it is left to a distant relation to do for the Dashwood women what John does not do for his own close kin. I just can't get over how blatantly selfish this is. I am tempted to think that Fanny Dashwood is just as big a villain as Mrs. Norris.

Second, Marian Veevers emphasies so beautifully how important Jane's writing was as a creative and intellectual outlet. Besides Jane's beloved sister Cassandra, it is likely that Jane's family didn't realize how brilliant she was until the 1810s when her novels were finally published. She seems to have been quite a private person and probably seemed from the outside like a quite conventional spinster, though rather acerbic and eager to sidestep domestic responsibilities if she could. (She was lucky Cassandra picked up quite a lot of these!) It makes so much sense to be that a person with a mind of such a caliber would need an outlet like writing as a way to work out her social commentary and to bring to light the complications of relationships. She has the genius touch of being both firmly rooted in her own time and place and also prophetic.

Third, I hadn't thought of Jane's novels before as being split into her "early novels" and her "mature novels", but there does seem to be a real difference between the novels she wrote as a young woman (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey) and the novels she wrote in her 30s with much more life experience (Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion). Perhaps the best word I can think of to describe the later novels is complex. I believe her technique had improved and been refined, too, especially her technique of free indirect discourse where the third person narrator slips in and out of characters' perspectives, sometimes in the space of a single sentence. I certainly find Pride and Prejudice (reading for Jane Austen July 2021) much easier to read than Mansfield Park (read for Jane Austen July 2020), though I am very familiar with both plots.

I am so thankful to have read this. I finished it with a much deeper and clarified understanding of Georgian society and the single woman's place within it, than I had before, and I know this will continue to enrich my reading of Austen and this time period in the future.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sense and Sensibilty is a good way to summarise this book. It is very detailed and covers many aspects of Jane and Dorothy’s lives.
Initially you feel that Jane is Sense and Dorothy is Sensibility, but the truth is much more nuanced and makes very interesting reading.
Dorothy seemed to betray her early tendencies to sensibility when caring for William’s children and in particular favouring his eldest son over his much more capable daughter. This could be said in Betrayal of her proto-feminist youth.
Jayne seems to grow into sensibility in a mature way and this is fascinating. Of the two, she seemed to reconcile herself to her situation in a much more rounded way.
Their experiences of course are different, but linked in the cultural and social norms of the day. In the end, I feel sad for Dorothy in having her development stunted and also for Jane in having her life so stunted and shortened,
This will provide many hours of rereading to get the full message, and it warrants every minute!

[Pamela Mingle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially, I thought JANE AND DOROTHY read a little like a college term paper, but it improved as it went along. The author began with very short passages about one of the women, switching rather quickly to the other. When Veevers began to write longer, more in depth sections about her subjects, it made for more enjoyable and informative reading.

I knew very little about Dorothy Wordsworth and learned a great deal about her sad childhood, about her devotion to her brother William (who betrays her in many ways), her attempts at writing, and her sad end.

Being a Janeite, I already knew a great deal about Austen; nevertheless, I appreciated some of the author's insights around the Austen family's move to Bath, the depth of Jane's despair, and her resentment against her father.

Jane, too, had a sad end--at the height of her creativity, dying at age 41.

[Deborah Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Austen lovers essential. This is a fascinating look at a whole era through the experiences of two very different literary women. Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen come from very different backgrounds - one a townie, the other a country girl (I'll leave you to be surprised which is which), both hide-bound by society's expectations. Marian Veevers explores what these expectations mean for both women, and gives us insights into their literary lives; the painterly eye of Dorothy, and the trenchant wit of Jane. How one was lauded in her lifetime and the other ignored. Both were unmarried women with family commitments, who had loved and lost in different ways - something that had an impact on their work, but was also overcome by their 'sense and sensibility.'

This is a great piece of research made eminently readable by a light touch. Highly recommended. Get the hardback, you'll want to keep it.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this fascinating. I was already quite familiar with Austen's life story, but the comparison was a great way to learn more about Dorothy Wordsworth, in whom I've always been interested. And the focus on their similar situations (unmarried, pseudo-gentry, dependent on brothers, financially insecure for much of their lives), was , I thought, a good idea for a book, and very well-executed. Next I'll have to finally read William Deresewiecz's book on Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets, which Veevers references here.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Born four years apart, both women were marked in their personal life and their writing by the social mores and inequalities that existed in Georgian England. This was a fascinating read as the author used the Austen characters of the Dashwood sisters in Sense and Sensibility as a foil to her look at the personalities, character, and behavior of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth. Definitely would recommend.
(Note to self to look at the mysteries written by the author, written under name Anna Dean and set in Georgian England!)

[Michelle Hyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is brilliant for its comparison of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth.
Women of the same era who took different paths.
Some of Dorothy's behaviour frustrated me and the relationship with her brother was a little intense.
I learnt so much from this book but mostly how dependent women of the Regency were on their family especially brothers.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really fascinating story of two female English writers in similar circumstances who made decisions that drastically altered the course of their literary legacy. Pretty much everyone knows Jane Austen's name, but until I read this book, I didn't even know that William Wordsworth even HAD a sister, Dorothy. It was fascinating seeing this real-life "Sense" (Jane) and "Sensibility" (Dorothy) take them in different directions. While Jane kept aloof from people, not making friends easily and retreating to her private world of imagination, Dorothy loved giving everything she had to others, to be wanted and needed, even at the expense of her own talent, which was sadly neglected in favor of supporting her brother and eventually his growing family. The author does a good job of showing the pros and cons of both sides of their lives, which is good because not everyone can (or should) aspire to be like one more than the other. Anyone interested in literary history, female writers, or the history of Georgian England may find this an interesting and informative piece of narrative nonfiction.

[Mark Capps · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clear, engaging double bio, with sad endings. A terrible thing to be an unmarried woman in the 19th century patriarchy.

[Marzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane and Dorothy is a serious biography of the early lives of writers Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth, who were close in age though living in differing circumstances in Georgian era England. While much has been written about Jane Austen, far less has been published on Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of poet William Wordsworth, and that was part of the lure of this title for me. The central tenet suggested by the title, that one represented Sense and the other Sensibility (as in the Austen novel) is a rather flawed one, as Veevers herself points out. This is, nevertheless, an interesting exploration of these two women's early lives. Both lived with family, Austen happily so, though Wordsworth less happily so in her early life. Following the death of her mother, Dorothy endured a stultifying existence until she was able to leave her grandparents to live with her adult brother, William. Though both Jane and Dorothy wrote, one obviously became quite famous while the other seemed content to have her writing live in the shadow of her brother, one of the most famous poets of the Romantic Period in English literature.

This tandem biography provides insight into the lives of women during this period in English history. To put it mildly, expectations of ladies during the Georgian era were rather narrowly structured. The claustrophobia of Jane and Dorothy's rather constrained lives produced very different women. Jane Austen turned her sharp eye on society and its demands of women. She learned caution and forbearance and just as did many of her wise heroines, and also learned that less intimacy and familiarity in friendships sometimes produced better results. Her sister Cassandra was her true confidant. In contrast, Dorothy for a time almost reveled in her role of suffering while living with her austere grandparents, and once living with William, placed a high value on emotional expression rather than circumspection. While Jane went on to deepen her understanding of the social condition that women, and especially unmarried or late-marrying women, found themselves in, Dorothy languished romantically. The biography manages to tackle the sticky question of whether or not Dorothy and William had an incestuous relationship, and also discusses Dorothy's seeming infatuation with a married man, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who she was later shocked to find was a drug addict and who managed to hurt just about everyone who knew him in one way or another.

An interesting aspect of this biography is their writing and differing expectations of writing for public consumption. While Jane Austen wrote from an early age and achieved great success as a writer, Dorothy Wordsworth seems to have eschewed public attention for her writing. And yet her writing, particularly in her Grasmere Journal, is quite luminous and as more recent scholars have noted, was borrowed from extensively by her brother William. In many instances, Dorothy's writing seems to have strongly informed William's. (One of the revelations of this biography, that William Wordsworth had lost his sense of smell and relied on Dorothy for scent and taste descriptions, is quite fascinating.) The reader can see some newer information about the Grasmere Journal in a Sian Cain's recent article in The Guardian.

Neither Jane nor Dorothy ever married and Veevers probes into their reasons, especially whether Jane's unmarried state, when viewed through the lens of a modern acceptance of a woman having a career, was in fact, a choice that allowed her to keep writing. Veevers questions the stories of a late potential love lost in Austen's life as perhaps contrived by the Austen family to explain Jane's spinsterhood as somehow not her choice. The idea of choosing to remain unmarried for career reasons would be inconceivable in Georgian England. Dorothy's reason for remaining unmarried seems to have been far more easily accepted as a choice to help her brother's career (and indeed, she did!) and family.

All in all, this was an enjoyable read. Veevers provides a wealth of references for the reader.



I received a Digital Review Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up the book, Jane and Dorothy: A True Tale of Sense and Sensibility by Marian Veevers while visiting Wordsworth’s cottage. In this deeply researched book, author, Marianne, compares the creative resilience of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the poet William.

Veevers interweaves the lives of these two women who were very much alike. Jane and Dorothy were close in age, Jane being only four years younger than Dorothy; both women depended on their brothers for financial security, and both women had an all-consuming creative drive. However, according to Veevers, one important difference separated the two women, which may have influenced each woman’s success or failure to commit to her creative nature.

Veevers’ examination of this difference sounds like a plot from a Jane Austen novel. In fact, Veevers, uses the title of Austen’s first published novel, Sense and Sensibility as the tagline for her book, which is a clue to where she is headed. The Dashwood sisters of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility become a metaphor for Jane and Dorothy

Elinor Dashwood is described as “possessing a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment. [Her] feelings were strong, but she knew how to govern them.” In contrast, Marianne is “eager in everything; her sorrows her joys could have no moderation.” (Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 1)

Veevers sees Jane with the same temperament as Elinor. She is controlled. Her emotions are held in check, while Dorothy is more akin to Marianne, letting her emotions run wild. Dorothy, who seems to have suffered from periodic depression, could also become uncontrollably joyful when greeting her brother, William, after a brief separation. “I think I screamed,” she admitted of one occasion. Viewing a beautiful seascape could bring her to tears.

Veevers guesses that if Dorothy and Jane had met, they wouldn’t have liked each other. As Jane possessed a special talent for mocking women with the sensibilities that Dorothy exhibits, I believe she is right.

As creativity does not alone depend on emotional tendencies, I do take issue with Veeres’ suggestion that “having coolness of judgment or being “eager in everything” can predict creative output. Other greater influences might also be in play.

In her famous essay, Virginia Wolf once said, “a woman needs a room of one’s own to write fiction.” Dorothy barely had a home of her own, let alone a room. Having been orphaned at a young age, Dorothy was shuttled from one family member to another, some of whom were not always kind. She longed for a home for most of her life. Only at the age of 28 did Dorothy, find a place to call home.

Jane lived at Steventon, Hampshire, for 32 Years. They became a family of wanderers for a short period when Jane’s father retired and then died unexpectedly. By 1806 the family settled into Chawton Cottage, Hampshire, where Jane lived until she died in 1817. Jane also seems to have found ways to write in privacy. The legendary creaking door to her “writing room at Chawton testifies to this. Even though the Steventon house took on students to be taught by her father, the house was large, so it is probable that space for her writing was easily found.

At Dove Cottage, Veevers notes Dorothy wrote her “best work”. This inspiration outpouring must have occurred in the early days of moving to their “home” as the small three-room Dove Cottage, quickly became overcrowded. In 1802 William married; three years later the couple’s baby arrived. Dove Cottage also seemed to attract a fair amount of drop-in guests, including the opium-addicted Coleridge’s screams, kept Dorothy awake at night. During the day she helped with the baby and made fair copies of her brother’s poems, sometimes requiring the copying of 8,000 lines. It would seem writing might have been down on her list of things to do.

If you’re looking for a way to get to know two very interesting women, this is the book for you. Reading Jane and Dorothy: A True Tale of Sense and Sensibility gave me a greater appreciation for Austen because of her amazing courage to parody the mannerisms, fashion, husband-hunting rituals, and expectations of women during the Georgian Era. Meeting Dorothy was a wonderful experience. I came to know her as a talented, loving woman who couldn’t catch a break.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

As biographer Marian Veevers asserts, when Jane Austen wrote about the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, in her novel SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, she could have been describing herself as Elinor, and Dorothy Wordsworth --- a woman she never met, but a contemporary with whom she had much in common --- as Marianne.

Dorothy was the sister of the famed poet William and was willing, it seemed, to subsume her own talents in favor of watching his flourish. Jane, by contrast, knew she had writing talent, almost compulsively pursuing it in an age when women simply did not have careers. Like Dorothy, she had limited means, never married, and lived in her later years by the largesse of a brother. Jane’s story is the better known, and Veevers, who works for the Wordsworth Trust and is better informed about Dorothy for that reason, has done her best to show the women in equal portion.

Unlike Dorothy, Jane wrote prolifically, her novels recognized among the literati by her 30s. Dorothy, who also knew she could write, never completed a book but left a legacy of letters and journals. Still, her life was anything but prosaic. It is still easy to speculate, despite Veevers' careful parsing of the situation, that Dorothy and William were lovers. He gave her the wedding ring that was to belong to his bride, and the two domiciled together for much of their adult lives. Dorothy not only was the third wheel in William’s marriage, but also shared her brother’s admiration and affection for his friend and fellow writer, Samuel Coleridge.

Veevers has taken pains to compare these two women to the favor of each. Jane was sensible, withdrawn, proper, reacting to her failures in love by shutting off her feelings; Dorothy was, like Austen’s Marianne, “eager in every thing.” Jane may have been the more conventionally attractive of the two, but Dorothy was known for her bright eyes and her willingness to experience what life had to offer. She, too, was depressed, but the symptoms were obvious to those around her, while Jane chose to suffer in silence. Both women were victims of an unfeminized age. In the Georgian era, revolutionary giant steps were being taken by men, while women were still judged (by men) to be inferior, a circumstance that Veevers properly calls “suffocating.”

The writing here is rich, the language redolent of the times, the “sense and sensibility” worthy of the book’s heroines. Veevers has done a great service to Jane and Dorothy, and to readers who will gain new or renewed admiration for them.

Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

[Sabaah Jauhar-Rizvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting book about two women who were born roughly around the same time, but whose lives took two completely different paths. While I found it interesting that Dorothy Wordsworth's upbringing had actually prepared her for a life of poverty, Jane Austen's upbringing did not. Both came from middle class gentry, yet only one had the actual skill set to survive with mundane tasks such as cooking and cleaning. Austen had not been taught these things. I found it just as disturbing that William Wordsworth's relationship with his sister was one of a lover rather than a brother. It's always bothered me and finding out that he had no sense of smell was interesting as it may have led to this weird dynamic. Though I found it odd the author was certain that the siblings did not engage in actual "sex" while also stating William was a very sexual creature who had apparently gone without for years before getting married. I hate to break it to you, but they may have had a sexual relationship without engaging in one sexual activity (William has always reminded me of the brother in Ford's "Tis Pity She's a Whore"-dominating and overbearing).

I would have liked more parallels between the two women, such as education or even areas in which they lived. Because it seems like Dorothy was regulated to piecing her brother's writings together in order to become poems while Jane was encouraged. Dorothy didn't seem to be encouraged to do anything but exist to be useful to her brother. So, it's not a bad book and very interesting to read. I do think it needed more parallels to bring it together.

[Judith · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I have read a number of biographies of Jane Austen, I had no knowledge of Dorothy Wordsworth: heard of her but not much. The influence of the latter on women's writing in the 19th century and her creative assistance to her brother deserves to be better known. Unfortunately her writing is travel experiences, not a genre widely read and travel in the 1800's is a small subset of such literature. Both lives inspire some sadness, for if they had had better finances and could have been more independent and less at the beck and call of their families, both would have written more. Dorothy's plight is particularly poignant, for all that she chose it (though what other choice had she as poor as she was). Though loved by her one brother William, he was typically obtuse as was that time in terms of expecting his sister to be self-sacrificing--well, probably he did not see it as self-sacrifice, as such dedication was expected of young (and older women) and the male presumption was that women found it rewarding, having no other wishes. The two women had much in common, though it is true they never met and perhaps were unaware of each other; at least there is no reason to think that Dorothy ever read Jane's books.Veevers points out that though they faced similar situations and expectations, each managed to manipulate these into some sort of life that was gratifying up to a point. The to-and-froing of her attention to each woman is well done and parallels clearly identified. Worth reading.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is book that should interest any Jane Austen fan who dosn't know much about Jane but has had a curiosity about how these classic books came to be. It does help to have read the novels as there are many references to the plots and characters. The premise of the book is that Jane and Dorothy Wordworth, sister of the poet, can be compared to Elinor and Marianne Dashwood of Austen's Sense and Sensibility. Born four years apart, and never destined to meet, Jane was private and circumspect like Elinor, and Dorothy was effusive and given to emotional decisions like Marianne. This comparison seemed a bit forced at times and intruded into the narrative. Overall, though, I truly enjoyed reading this book and found it quite fascinating. In many ways, this is a story about the pseudo-gentry women of Georgian England and how their choices were so limited. You could marry and hope for a happy and financially stable union, or you could be a spinster, as Jane and Dorothy were, and be an economic burden to your family. Jane struggled for years with her limited choices but somehow her genious for writing prevailed and she wrote classic novels. Dorothy had less success with her own writing and had an unusually close relationship with her famous brother.

After reading this book, I wanted to meet the author for tea and discussion. I found her approach to her subject matter quite perceptive and sympathetic. A very interesting book!

[Martha Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever wondered how Jane Austin's private life influenced her novels? Have you marveled at how constrained her heroines seem to be?  A beautifully written and easily readable dual biography illuminates Jane's life in the context of another literary woman who had a great influence on the inception the romantic poetry, Dorothy Wordsworth. The book follows these 2 women from childhood through to their deaths during the same Georgian time period.

Despite Jane's excellent books, I still had little idea of how very difficult women's lives were during this period. For the whole of her life, Jane had no money of her own and was not able to determine where she lived or for how long, when she traveled and to where, or even how she spent her time.

Dorothy Wordsworth's ground breaking (and ultimately heart-breaking) life is a stark contrast to Jane's and yet reinforces all those constraints under which all women labored at the time.

You will leave this book with new empathy both for the author of Pride and Prejudice and for the muse of "I wandered lonely as a cloud."

[Mary Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my understanding of the novels of Jane Austen. I have long been a fan of her stories because they are sharply observed and brilliantly written. This book, however, deepened by appreciation of Austen's work because it beautifully described the limitations and problems of Jane Austen and other women of the "pseudo-gentry" in Georgian England. I also found the author's juxtaposition of Jane Austen's life with that of Dorothy Wordsworth (about whom I knew nothing) both illuminating and fascinating. Although limited by gender and class, these women nevertheless made choices that defined their lives---Jane Austen deciding to write and refusing to marry without love and Dorothy Wordsworth flouting convention to live with her brother and write her journals. Neither woman had an easy time but both created bodies of work that endure.

[Diane Ball · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book enlightening with regards to the lives of Dorothy and William Wordsworth. It was very revealing about the struggles that they went through, and the struggles of their friends. It is easy to think, having read Dorothy Wordsworth's diaries and William Wordsworth's poem, that their lives in the Lake District were full of idyllic days wandering around the beautiful countryside. In reality they both had disturbed lives and an extremely complex relationship. This was a book that told the history of Jane Austen and the Wordsworths in an easy-to-read format, but informative and interesting at the same time.

[Fran Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a book for everyone, but a book for literary-minded women. After a bit of re-establishing the reader in Georgian England, the two lives began to mature, to find their niche in the world of books and education, in the making of lives without a means of making a living. Wonderful that Dorothy Wordsworth is finally given her due as muse and scribe, reader and partner, and writer. Wonderful that we see Miss Austen stick to business, and grow herself into success. Veneers has made a good job of data and sense, of fat t-shirt and emotions, of knowledge and appreciation.

[Val · Rating 2 out of 5]

After plowing through this book, I can honestly say I'm glad I read Jane Austen before I read this biography. Because this author is so boring she makes her subjects boring too. I suppose if her point was to show the shear frustration of being a single woman in Georgian England, she succeeded. I have read other biographies of Jane Austen which made her seem much more human. I have never read anything about Dorothy Wordsworth, but given that this author works for the Wordsworth Trust, I think she probably knew more about her than she did about Jane.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should learn not to try to read any more biographies of Jane Austen. So little is known about her; and that little is well-known. This book was a little too full of how she must have felt and what she must have thought, both with Austen and Wordsworth, and I find that kind of speculation wearisome. I don't know anything about Wordsworth other than what I read here but I am guessing that the details about her life are also scarce. If I want to know anything more about Jane Austen's life, I am going to just read her letters.

[Christiana Reuling · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is quite dense and academic. I feel like I’ve just finished a college course on the lives of Jane Austen and Dorothy Wordsworth, who grew up during the same time, but did not know each other. All throughout, this deepened my admiration for Jane, especially, and inspired me to rewatch several of the movie adaptions of her novels. I was less familiar with Dorothy’s work, but I learned much through the comparisons of situation and circumstance between both writers. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am a bit sad to have finished it.

[Michelle LaRowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always like to learn more about Jane Austen and her life so of course I found this book interesting from that angle. I especially liked how the author went back and forth between Jane and Dorothy and compared their situations and their characters. What makes this book special is that it tackles how two women handled the constraints of their time period in their own individual ways. I would have liked more of an ending for both Jane and Dorothy, it seemed rather abrupt and lacking in details. Still, I learned a lot and would rate this four and a half stars if I could.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. I have previously read quite a bit about Jane of course, and several things about various Romantics. But I really enjoyed this from the perspective of what it was like and what choices were open to unmarried women in Georgian/Regency times. Very interesting. FYI I am on Team Jane. LOL. Also found several NEW despicable things about Samuel Taylor Coleridge's character to hate. Good read for Janeites.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of both these women so I already knew a far amount about them, and although Veevers didn't present me with new information, she wrote it in such a fresh way that it felt new. At the start the constant swapping back and forth between Jane and Dorothy was slightly frustrating, but as the book progresses it calms down. It is a style that is needed to hammer home the comparisons in their lives. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Jenny Luera · Rating 4 out of 5]

"She had been forced into prudence in her youth," Jane would write of her final heroine - Anne Elliot of Persuasion - "she learned romance as she grew older - the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning." In her margin of her copy of that novel, Cassandra wrote, after her sister's death, "Dear, dear Jane! This deserves to be written in letters of gold."

Really interesting look into 2 women who were born into a rigid society and made choices that defied the system.