Patchwork
A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A bold reimagining of the life of much-loved English Regency writer, Jane Austen, from the author of RED ROSA and THREADS
In her later years, Jane Austen made a patchwork quilt. She folded thousands of tiny scraps of fabric over diamond-shaped slips of paper and painstakingly stitched them together. Kate Evans employs these slivers of cloth to illustrate Jane Austen’s life story. Evans teases apart the threads that connect Austen’s beloved novels, the events of her life, and the fabric of society in Regency England.
Patchwork is a major new work of graphic biography. Kate Evans has an unparalleled ability to marry drama, comedy, and historically immersive detail, bringing Austen’s story to life with fluid, dynamic artwork, at times embroidered onto cloth itself. The author’s love for Austen shines throughout. Her incredible eye for historical detail – panes of glass, bits of lace, hedgelaying styles, the cut of a coat or the architecture of a Hampshire cottage – creates a captivating vision of Jane Austen’s world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This artful and thought-provoking graphic biography from Evans (Threads) stitches a postcolonial layer into the narrative by examining the fabrics worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries. Inspired by a patchwork coverlet that Jane "meticulously folded and painstakingly stitched," the title also alludes to the "threadbare" letters and manuscripts from which historians reconstruct her life. The seventh child in a family clinging precariously to the upper class, Jane bounces between boarding schools while attempting to nurture her creative impulses, which her father supports. Her mother relocates the family to Bath in hopes of landing husbands for Jane and her younger sister, Cassandra. Though Jane remains unmarried, "her spirits soar" (Evans implies she had at least one secret romance). But "there are other voices in these fabrics, if we choose to hear them"—so begins the "Interlude," which visits the fabrics' origins. In colonial India, impoverished women weave fine Dhaka muslin; cotton is picked by enslaved Black Americans and spun by children in the north of England working 14 hours a day. The voices of these workers live on in song lyrics that adorn pages illustrated by intricate embroidery woven between colorful, caricature-filled comics art. The question "Where is the line between imagination and reality, when a legal fiction can... condemn people to be properties?" echoes through the final biography section, as Jane's fate rests on the whims of male family members. Evans pointedly and beautifully illuminates the seams of this quilted narrative.
