Interview with Claire Harman

Claire Harman's first book, a biography of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner won the John Llewellyn Rhys prize. Her subsequent biography of the eighteenth-century novelist, Fanny Burney was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. Her last book, Robert Louis Stevenson: A Life was published to great critical acclaim in 2006.

Mark Thwaite: What first gave you the idea for writing Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World?

Claire Harman: I've always loved Austen and wanted to write a biography of her before I wrote my book on Fanny Burney, but there just seemed too many other lives on the market at that time. After I'd written about Burney, and then about Robert Louis Stevenson, I still hankered after Austen. I was talking to my friend Mark Bostridge about it and he suggested not a straight biography, but a book that would do for Austen what Lucasta Miller's The Bronte Myth did for the Brontes. That immediately seemed like a brilliant idea.

Mark Thwaite: How long did it take you to research? Do you enjoy the research, or do you find yourself impatient to get down to the actual writing?

Claire Harman: I love research. That's always my favourite part of a project. Looking at manuscripts, searching out sites; it beats sitting at a keyboard any day. It also goes on through the writing, so for this project took about three years.

Mark Thwaite: What was the most fascinating thing you learned about Jane Austen during the course of writing your book?

Claire Harman: It was really illuminating to re-read her letters, very slowly. I read them one at a time, as if I were receiving them personally, and looked up all the references. So many things emerged! I got particularly interested in the shadowy Edward Taylor, though he doesn't get into my book at all. She obviously had a far more serious crush on him than on Tom Lefroy, the heartthrob in the film Becoming Jane.

Mark Thwaite: Obviously, people will need to read your book to get the full answer to this question, but just how did Jane conquer the world!?

Claire Harman: By understanding exactly what readers want and giving it to them. Her books appeal very broadly, so have been easy to adapt into a sort of literary single currency in the mass-communications age.

Mark Thwaite: How long did it take you to write your book Claire? How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?

Claire Harman: It took two and half years from contract to delivery, which is a record for me. I used to write longhand and came rather late to word-processing, but now I make lots of notes and then compose straight onto the computer. I do a lot of micro-tweaking, but the final text is not that dissimilar from the first draft.

Mark Thwaite: What was the most difficult aspect of writing your book? How did you overcome it?

Claire Harman: Balancing the early chapters, which had a lot of biographical content, with the later ones, which were more critical. There was a lot more that I would have liked to include in the early part that simply would have overtipped that balance. I had to be firm with myself and leave out lots of side issues.

Mark Thwaite: Do you read the critics? Have you been pleased with the responses to this book and your previous work? Have you learned anything from them?

Claire Harman: There haven't been many reviews of this book yet, but they've been extremely good so far, so yes, I'm pleased! It's very gratifying when people 'get' what you were trying to do, and of course it's always wonderful if they enjoy a book you've written.

Mark Thwaite: You've also written about Fanny Burney (a writer of some importance to Austen, of course) and Robert Louis Stevenson. Once you've written a biography, is that person "done" for you or do you remain interested in your previous subjects?

Claire Harman: No, I remain intensely interested! No life is ever 'done' definitively, so it is always interesting to keep up with the new research and writing, and anyone you've spent years writing about is going to stay with you forever -- it's the biggest perk. There's been so much more work done on Sylvia Townsend Warner since my biography in 1989 that I'd of course like to re-write that book. I think about her a great deal.

Mark Thwaite: You are a student of Professor Kathryn Sutherland, author of Jane Austen's Textual Lives, but you've recently had something of a scholarly falling out -- can we help you patch things up!?

Claire Harman: That's a very kind offer, worthy of an Austen hero! I was Prof Sutherland's student, but a very long time ago, 1976, and I didn't study Austen with her. It's been a very one-sided "falling-out" so far, since the first I heard of it was when it was reported in The Observer. She has accused me of not adequately crediting her published work, but the real issue is that she wanted to write a follow-up volume to her 2005 specialist study of Austen's manuscripts and feels that my book (and many others, one presumes) somehow prevents her from doing that. She made dark hints in The Observer that I had "ended her hopes of a wider readership", but perhaps the publicity she solicited by her stunt has gone some way towards easing those frustrations.

Mark Thwaite: What do you do when you are not writing?

Claire Harman: I teach part-time at Columbia University in New York, I read a lot, I garden, though my current garden is so small, that doesn't provide much distraction. There are only so many times you can weed a planter.

Mark Thwaite: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?

Claire Harman: For this book, I did have several friends in mind as the sort of readers I wanted to please. They are all people who care passionately about Austen and know her books backwards.

Mark Thwaite: What are you working on now?

Claire Harman: I've got several ideas I'm happily mulling over. Still thinking a lot about Austen and what to do with all the material I couldn't get into Jane's Fame, but I doubt I'll write another book on her.

Mark Thwaite: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?

Claire Harman: I don't have one favourite! I love all the writers I've written about, and have a special corner in my heart reserved for Sylvia Townsend Warner, whose diaries and poems I've edited as well as writing her biography. Otherwise, any sort of 18th century history, anything to do with the fin-de-siecle, (almost) any sort of 20th century poetry. Nabokov's Speak, Memory is a perfect book. And I admire Alice Munro more than any other living writer: a great short story is the hardest thing to write.

Mark Thwaite: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

Claire Harman: Do something else as well.

Mark Thwaite: Anything else you would like to say?

Claire Harman: No thanks, that was fine!