Life in the Country, with Quotations by Jane Austen and Silhouettes by Her Nephew James Edward
>silhouettes by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh

Ann Turner is the financial and budget manager of the University of
British Columbia Library.

James Edward Austen-Leigh, favourite nephew and biographer of novelist
Jane Austen, was a clergyman in rural England and a master of the
silhouette cutter’s art. The country life depicted in this exquisite
collection is the one he knew in Hampshire in the 1830s. He cut the
silhouettes freehand to amuse his children, but they are such jewels
that they have been handed down and cherished privately by subsequent
generations of the family. His great great-granddaughter, Freydis Jane
Welland, has chosen to share them with the world as a tribute to Jane
and Edward, and in memory of her mother, Canadian playwright and
novelist Joan Austen-Leigh.

Welland and co-editor Eileen Sutherland searched Jane Austen’s work
for quotations that fit each of the more than 70 silhouettes in the
collection, and their thoughtful pairing of the art and the text
enhances both. They collaborated with award-winning book designer Robert
R. Reid to create a volume of extraordinary beauty, elegance, and
simplicity, hand-bound in natural linen covers with richly marbled
scarlet endpapers. The silhouettes are reproduced with amazing crispness
and clarity. The passage of nearly 200 years and the application of
current laser printer technology have not diminished their vitality in
the least, and the typefaces chosen for the supporting text,
contemporary with Jane Austen’s time, are well-matched with them.

Issued in a first edition of 150 numbered copies, this is a delightful
book for quiet contemplation and enjoyment. Readers will marvel at the
intricacy and vividness of the silhouettes, the aptness of the
quotations, and the fine craftsmanship that brings them together so
happily.