Austin, Jane Goodwin

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AUSTIN, Jane Goodwin

Born 25 January 1831, Worcester, Massachusetts; died 30 March 1894, Roxbury, Massachusetts

Daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth Hammatt Goodwin; married Loring Henry Austin, circa 1850

Austin's father died during her childhood and her mother moved to Boston, where Austin was educated in private schools. When her own three children were grown, she wrote novels, as well as fiction for such periodicals as Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, Putnam's, Lippincott's, and the Galaxy. Austin lived for a short time (circa 1869) in Concord, where she knew Louisa May Alcott, Emerson, and the Hawthornes.

Dora Darling; or, The Daughter of the Regiment (1864) is in many ways Austin's most charming novel. Mrs. Darley, the mother of twelve-year-old Dora, sympathizes with the Union and hides a Union soldier even though she is dying. Dora's "selfish and depraved" father and her brother support the Confederacy, and Dora is sent, after her mother's death, to live with a cruel aunt. With the aid of an aged freedman, she escapes and joins the Union army as a vivandiére. She is befriended by the soldier her mother had aided (who turns out to be her cousin from Massachusetts) and by the chaplain, who undertakes her education. Dora's initiative and sterling character contrast sharply with the treachery of the villains in the novel.

None of Austin's novels involves more coincidences than Cipher (1869), on which Louisa May Alcott is supposed to have collaborated. It features bastardy and miscegenation, a doctor who poisons his wife, long-lost heirs, a poisoned Italian bracelet, a Spanish gypsy, voodoo, and more happenings that strain the reader's credence. Inspired by William Bradford's newly rediscovered history, Of Plymouth Plantation, printed in 1856, and by traditions handed down from her own Mayflower ancestors, Austin wrote several books about the Pilgrims: Standish of Standish (1889), Betty Alden (1891), A Nameless Nobleman (1881), David Alden's Daughter (1892), and Dr. LeBaron and His Daughters (1890). In Standish of Standish, she is content to flesh out Bradford's narrative with dialogue and characterization, making Myles Standish the hero and foreshadowing John Billington's bad end by depicting the entire Billington family as coarse or troublesome. Standish's two marriages are romanticized here and in the other books. "The Love Life of William Bradford," in David Alden's Daughter, is entirely fabricated and supported by fictitious documentation. Bradford's one-sentence dismissal of Governor Carver's wife—"And his wife, being a weak woman, died within five or six weeks after him"—becomes a tear-soaked 34-page saga, "The Wife of John Carver," in David Alden's Daughter.

Giving prominence to Pilgrim mothers, Austin skillfully retells such stories as the wooing of Patricia Molines, the treachery of Oldhame and Lyford, and the ousting of Morton from Merry Mount. Details of geography, weaponry, dress, tableware, diet, and genealogy are carefully researched. The speech, particularly of those characters who are soldiers, sailors, or children, often seems unduly formal or literary.

Although Austin's works, like those of her friend Louisa May Alcott, show a decided split between edifying books for young people and sensational shockers, she signed her real name to all and seems always to delight in her story, whether contemporary or historical, probable or improbable.

Other Works:

Fairy Dreams; or, Wanderings in Elf-land (1859). Kinah's Curse (1864). The Novice; or, Mother Church Thwarted (1865). The Tailor Boy (1865). Outpost (1866). The Shadow of Moloch Mountain (1870). Moonfolk (1874). Mrs. Beauchamp Brown (1880). The Desmond Hundred (1882). Nantucket Scraps (1882). It Never Did Run Smooth (1892). Queen Tempest (1892). The Twelve Great Diamonds (1892). The Cedar Swamp Mystery (1901).