Occasionally think about how Jane Austen only published four novels during her lifetime and never made nearly enough to live on. Being unable to support oneself on even some of the best novels ever written is so fucked.
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i've always been under the impression that becoming a successful author—irregradless of talent—was akin to winning the lottery. It's a field built on luck and lots of connections.
The system isn't designed to necessarily enrich the creator, the Starving Artist. It rewards power brokers & middlemen who frequently benefit the most after an artist's demise.
It’s almost like supporting oneself with art has always been very difficult and attained by either absolute wunderkund or those who know how to sell themselves to the rich
Jane Friedman‘s book “business of writing“ she mentions how so many classic authors had to have second job to support themselves. It was really eye-opening for me.
Uh! Your post sent me down a rabbit hole & now I’ve read a paper on the 3 Austen wills (Jane & 2x Cassandras).
Cassandra jnr left c£1m in today’s money but most came from gifts & bequests. Jane earned c£45k post-tax for 4 books. NA & Persuasion got about the same. Cass sold all rights for c£20k.
I was talking to a few accomplished authors during my creative writing course, and ALL of them say the same thing: they don't make a living through writing, but through other means. This market is very twisted.
I mean, at the time she was writing half the population was illiterate and a well-produced hardback retailed for the modern equivalent of $80+. Under those constraints very few authors could earn a good living by mass-market sales.
Or gotten Nike to sponsor her: "Not sure if you should turn down that pompous man? JUST DO IT!" "Longing to explore the sealed rooms in your honey's mansion? JUST DO IT!" &c. &c.
Makes me genuinely sad how artists, no matter the medium, seem to never be compensated and honored for their works while they are alive. Yet they are immortalized even after so long through the works that gave them nothing when they needed it
Vincent van Gogh notably sold only a handful of paintings during his lifetime, and most of those to family members who were simply trying to help him out.
Sometimes I think about Melville publishing multiple lifetimes of genius prose in the 1850s then deciding that being a Bartleby who writes mid poetry was a better way to spend the next four (😳) decades.
Maria Edgeworth was doing pretty good though. Austen is better than Edgeworth, but on one level, I’ve got to say — this is the consequence you sign up for when you write from the perspective of the landed gentry rather than the more numerous bourgeoisie.
Were Dicken's characters considered part of the high class elite? I'm going through Oliver Twist, and I've read part of Great Expectations, but the rich gentry aspect doesn't come until the very end.
It really is interesting considering the kinds of conservatism espoused by her and George Elliot, neither of whom seem generally associated with conservatism at this point
I think this is precisely right. Though in particular topics like marriage being a torture chamber sent directly from hell, I think she’s more radical than most people even today 😅
I definitely think of Austen as a conservative — even *primarily* as a conservative. A lively, high-spirited, intelligent conservative who (like Burke) was skeptical about the inherent goodness of human nature, but (unlike him) was specifically wry about men!
Also probably that lots of people approach her from the frame of "the 19c novel" and not from the frame of "1790s political debate."
If you approach her right after reading Godwin and Wollstonecraft ... Northanger Abbey is very legible as an "anti-Jacobin novel." Maybe the best one written.
It's not olde tymes, necessarily. It has repercussions today. British surgeons are still addressed as "Mrs" or "Miss" or "Mr" and not as "Doctor" because unlike physicians they work with their hands and are therefore "in trade."
Similarly the reason why posh Brits tend to have a sneery attitude towards the Royals is that the Windsors are seen as nouveau riche foreign arrivistes and not as proper aristocracy. Stephen Fry once got a big laugh from a posh audience by describing them as "Just a middle class German family."
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Cassandra jnr left c£1m in today’s money but most came from gifts & bequests. Jane earned c£45k post-tax for 4 books. NA & Persuasion got about the same. Cass sold all rights for c£20k.
I know some extremely good musicians who agree.
No accident he made a lot more money!
He does represent the spectrum socially though, more sympathetically than Austen does.
If she was a contemporary I’d have to pinch pretty hard
She's not often framed that way +
1. Literary critics have often actually shared her disdain for the bourgeoisie, or at least haven't minded it.
2. Gender has loomed larger than 19c class conflict in many analyses. (Understandably.)
If you approach her right after reading Godwin and Wollstonecraft ... Northanger Abbey is very legible as an "anti-Jacobin novel." Maybe the best one written.