News
Latest journalism
‘Who's that Girl?’
Guardian Review, 12 March 2007 – an article about the auction in New York of the ‘Rice Portrait’, a disputed portrait of Jane Austen.
Click here to read article
Spring 2007
Just published by the Folio Society, ‘The Body-Snatcher and Other Stories’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, with an introduction by Claire.
Autumn 2007
Short story ‘Terrible Trousers’ to appear in S Magazine (Sunday Express)
Spring 2008
The new Collected Poems of Sylvia Townsend Warner will be published by Carcanet Press. This is a significantly larger collection, with over 90 previously uncollected and unpublished poems, a new introduction, expanded notes and a chronology.
Forthcoming
My work-in-progress is Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World for Canongate Books (UK) and Henry Holt (US). It's a history of Austen's fame, the changing status of her work and what it has stood for, or been made to stand for, in English culture in the two hundred years since her death. Starting with Austen's own experience as a beginning author, her difficulties getting published and her determination to succeed, I explore the history of how her estate was handled by her brother, sister, nieces and nephews, the eruption of public interest in Austen in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the making of her into a classic English author in the twentieth century, the critical wars that erupted as a result and, lastly, her powerful influence on contemporary phenomena such as chick-lit, romantic comedy, the heritage industry and film. Part biography, part cultural history, it's a fascinating story, full of odd anecdotes and some new insights too.
