Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen

This artful and thought-provoking graphic biography from Evans (Threads) stitches a postcolonial layer into the narrative by examining the fabrics worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries. Inspired by a patchwork coverlet that Jane “meticulously folded and painstakingly stitched,” the title also alludes to the “threadbare” letters and manuscripts from which historians reconstruct her life. The seventh child in a family clinging precariously to the upper class, Jane bounces between boarding schools while attempting to nurture her creative impulses, which her father supports. Her mother relocates the family to Bath in hopes of landing husbands for Jane and her younger sister, Cassandra. Though Jane remains unmarried, “her spirits soar” (Evans implies she had at least one secret romance). But “there are other voices in these fabrics, if we choose to hear them”—so begins the “Interlude,” which visits the fabrics’ origins. In colonial India, impoverished women weave fine Dhaka muslin; cotton is picked by enslaved Black Americans and spun by children in the north of England working 14 hours a day. The voices of these workers live on in song lyrics that adorn pages illustrated by intricate embroidery woven between colorful, caricature-filled comics art. The question “Where is the line between imagination and reality, when a legal fiction can... condemn people to be properties?” echoes through the final biography section, as Jane’s fate rests on the whims of male family members. Evans pointedly and beautifully illuminates the seams of this quilted narrative. (Oct.)