Features
Hank Kennedy | July 2, 2026
2025 marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of novelist Jane Austen. To capitalize, numerous books covering all facets of Austen’s life are being released. From stories the author herself described as “pictures of domestic life in country villages” have emerged books that have never been out of print and served as the inspirations for a few comics and countless films, including Bridget Jones’ Diary, Clueless and Fire Island.
By way of confession, I am not a Jane Austen fanatic. I am not one of those people for whom the current owner of Austen’s childhood home is raising aggressive bulls to keep away.1 Before starting Kate Evans’ Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen and The Novel Life of Jane Austen by Janine Barchas and Isabel Greenberg I made a mental checklist of things I knew about Austen: She was a novelist, she was British, she died relatively young, and her work has had enduring popularity for centuries. Was that really it? Apparently so. Therefore I went into the two books with something of a clean slate.
The title Patchwork has a dual meaning. It refers not only to the garment sewn by Austen and her family, but also the disparate threads Evans stitches together to recreate her life. This is more of a task than it may seem. My ignorance of the details of Austen’s life was not entirely my own doing. After her death, sister Cassandra destroyed most of her letters, over fears of their embarrassing content. Propriety trumped posterity. Evans, Barchas, and Greenberg all use the surviving letters, letters from family, early biographies, scholarly works, and even supposed autobiographical details from Austen’s fiction to tell her story.
