SOURCE: Hammill, Faye. “‘My Own Life Will Never Be Enough for Me’: Carol Shields as Biographer.” American Review of Canadian Studies 32, no. 1 (spring 2002): 143-48.

In the following review of Jane Austen, Hammill comments that Shields provides a genuinely new perspective on Austen's life while highlighting the speculative nature of biography.

My debt to Jane Austen herself is incalculable,” writes Carol Shields on the last page of her new biography [Jane Austen] of Austen (154). The biography sheds light on Shields's relationship to Austen, and it also offers a subtle exploration of the problems and pleasures of biographical research—a subject which has preoccupied Shields in much of her earlier writing. These aspects of the book will increase its appeal to admirers of Carol Shields and scholars of her work, although the intended audience is the general reader seeking an introduction to Austen's life. Jane Austen is part of the...