Not a biography, more a close-read study, A Fine Brush on Ivory: An Appreciation of Jane Austen (OUP £12.99) is a beautifully crafted essay by Richard Jenkyns. The author has a huge love for his subject, but since Austen’s work reflects her milieu with such a clear mirror, her personality and life circumstances are inevitably brought into focus too. In chapters such as “A Park with a View” and “The Sense Sensibility”, Jenkyns provides information for beginners and insights for experts. This is a small and elegant Christmas present for all enthusiasts.
In Cassell’s Tales of Endurance, (Cassell £20), Fergus Fleming identifies three ages of exploration: the age of reconnaissance, the age of inquiry and the age of endeavour, which roughly correspond to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the modern era (ending in the 1920s, “when the combustion engine transformed the nature of the quest”).
Fleming analyses people who made geographical discoveries or endured hellish conditions on insane journeys. They range from Marco Polo and Magellan to more obscure adventurers, such as Adolphus Greely, whose 19th-century Arctic expedition came to a sticky end amid mutiny and cannibalism. But, as Greely gasped to his rescuers: “Seven of us left - here we are - dying - like men. Did what I came to do - beat the best record!”
