She played and sang: Jane Austen and music

by Gillian Dooley

Overview

A fascinating study of the role that music played in Jane Austen's life.

Like her much-loved heroine Emma Woodhouse, Jane Austen ‘played and sang’. Music occupied a central role in her life, and she made brilliant use of it in her novels to illuminate characters’ personalities and highlight the contrasts between them.

Delving into the Austen family music books, Gillian Dooley discovers a treasure trove of evidence that unveils a previously underappreciated facet of Austen's world. She unravels the author’s musical connections with family and friends, revealing the intricate ties between her fiction and the melodies she performed.

With these revelations, Austen's musical legacy comes to life, granting us a deeper understanding of her artistic prowess and the influences that shaped her literary masterpieces.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526192301
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	08/19/2025
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.80(h) x (d)

About the Author

Gillian Dooley is an Honorary Associate Professor in English at Flinders University. She has published and presented internationally on Jane Austen, and as a singer she has curated programmes of music from Austen’s personal collection since 2007. She has appeared on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Book Show and The Minefield as an expert on Austen. Her most recent books are Matthew Flinders: The Man behind the Map and Listening to Iris Murdoch: Music, Sounds, and Silences (both 2022).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1 The Jane Austen music manuscripts
2 Jane Austen’s musical relationships
3 Jane Austen and the music of the French Revolution
4 ‘These happy effects on the character of the British sailor’: family life in sea songs of the late Georgian period
5 Jane Austen, Thomas Arne and Georgian musical theatre
6 Jane Austen and British song
7 Juvenile songs and lessons: music culture in Jane Austen’s teenage years
8 Marianne and Willoughby, Lucy and Colin: betrayal, suffering, death and the poetic image
Conclusion
Index

Editorial Reviews

CHOICE OUTSTANDING TITLE 2024

'Dooley sings out with important information about the musical tastes and activities of Jane Austen. You’ll be glad you tuned in to her harmonious and engaging book!'
Janine Barchas, author of The Lost Books of Jane Austen

‘In this fascinating and knowledgeable study Gillian Dooley invites us to hear again the audible traces of a forgotten musical repertoire that played through Jane Austen’s life and writings.’
Kathryn Sutherland, editor of Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts

'A beautifully detailed account of the importance of music, and especially of song, to Jane Austen.'
John Mullan, author of What Matters in Jane Austen?

'Gillian Dooley brings deep knowledge and appreciation of both musical and literary composition to establish their connection in Austen's writing. She played and sang is a lucid, detailed and fascinating addition that brings new insights to this important aspect of Austen studies.'
Sandie Byrne, author of Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions

'An illuminating book on the power of music as a social and rhetorical force in Austen’s life and fiction. Gillian Dooley, drawing on a recently unearthed collection of 500 pieces of Austen family sheet music, has produced an original, informative must-read.'
Devoney Looser, author of Sister Novelists

'It’s an interesting read, but, more importantly, it fills a gap in our knowledge of the music Austen loved, copied, and sang. Dooley brought to mind how important reading out loud was to Austen and the people of her time, and how important music was in an era when family and local and musicians provided wonderful entertainments for their families and communities.'
Jane Austen's World

'Gillian Dooley has done the burgeoning world of Austen studies a service by cataloguing the manuscripts that survive in Austen’s hand'
Nicholas Kenyon, BBC Music Magazine

'Meticulously researched, detailed and original, Gillian Dooley's exhaustive account of the role of music in the life of Jane Austen, her family and her fictional creations is a remarkable achievement.'
Jocelyn Bury, Jane Austen's Regency World Magazine

'Engagingly written, She played and sang provides a detailed and thoughtful picture of a song repertoire associated with Jane Austen and heard in the British domestic sphere during her era. Dooley's book provides the most extensive overview of Austen's music collection available., unearthing fascinating new relationships between the author's thinking and the music of her time.'
Marian Wilson Kimber, Journal of the American Musicological Society

'This informative and readable book is sure to interest scholars and general readers of Jane Austen’s writing, as well as those who would like greater insight into the kind of music played and enjoyed in the domestic setting in early nineteenth-century England.'
Frances Wilson, Interlude.hk

'The book is accessible to any reader of Austen whose enthusiasm for her work is stimulated by an increased understanding of the world she inhabited, in this case the importance of music, both vocal and instrumental, in her world and her life.'
Good Reading Magazine

'Dooley’s account of Austen and music, though comprehensive, is unburdened by technical or pedagogical terminology.'
Elsa Solender, Jane Austen Society of North America

'As a devotee of Jane Austen, Dooley’s She Played and Sang was a delight to read. This text is extensively researched and shows the author’s considerable knowledge of traditional and contemporary Jane Austen scholarship. She Played and Sang is a quick and absorbing read for any Jane Austen fan.
—E. P. Muntis, Lebanon Correctional Institution
Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers, advanced undergraduates through faculty, and professionals.'
CHOICE November 2024 Vol. 62 No. 3

From the Publisher