A new take on a biographical work. Patchwork showcased a unique art style and an engaging storytelling style. As a lover of Jane Austen, this was a unique take on her life with added context of historical norms of the time and additional details about those in her life.

The art is beautiful, and it's clear that the life of Jane Austen and her family are meticulously researched. I did find the narrative slow at times, in part because there's so little concrete information known about Jane and her interiority. The section I found most compelling focused on the origins of different fabrics across the British Empire, and the impact on people in those colonies. Unfortunately, this was a very short segment of the book. The artistry is incredible, though, and the attention to detail is stunning. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an eBook copy in exchange for an honest review.

I wish the books text was more integrated with the illustrations. The begging was a lot of “telling” instead of “showing” which slowed down the pace. I loved the history of all the different fabrics! I think if that was spread out with each section when the fabric type was mentioned then the “patchwork” theme would have made more sense.

Kate Evans writes about Jane Austen's life in a series of patches representing a chapter in her life. Each piece is unique and creatively chosen to represent her life events. At the end of the book, it includes notes and pictures of Jane and her family. The notes give you a deeper insight into her life. In the book, quotes from her novels and letters gave insight into the world during her lifetime. The illustrations are gorgeous and very detailed. They are based on pictures of her and her family. One interesting thing about her life that I did not know was about her brother George, who was sent away because he had a genetic condition.

I liked this unique approach to writing a biography, which highlights the main points in her life through quotes, bringing into focus her quilt, which she sewed together. The author does tell us she changed some of the dates in her biography for dramatic effect, but the notes were correct. Fans of Jane would love this unique biography, which includes excerpts from her letters showing the themes and motivations behind her books.

Patchwork is a remarkable biographic graphic novel retracing the life of Jane Ausen in a delicate all-encompassing way, setting her clearly in her time so we have a very good idea of what she saw, lived through and what it meant.
It is beautifully researched, clever, and gives plenty of food for thought, which is so much more than most lengthy biographies give.
The fact there is many unknowns in the life of Austen probably helps, as the author was able to fully explore a number of influences exerted on all women living in that time era: such as neurodivergence, the horrendous fabric trade, short life expectancies, dependence...

And all of it was supported by incredible art. The illustrations are very personal, and while many might find them hard to appreciate, I found them absolutely perfect, as they didn't cater to today's expectations. They felt like they were lifted directly from the 1800s, from those historical notebooks where you see sketches made by people of the time with coloured pencils or art supplies very much like it.
It looked like it came from across time. The work done is remarkable in integrating a number of different techniques too; there is pieces that were sewn from fabric, others cut out in paper... also reflecting what higher-class ladies would have been doing in their spare time. I can't say how much it added to the experience.

Highly recommended addition to the library of any fan of Jane Austen or the Regency period. I've never seen any work quite like it, and it really blew me away.

Unfortunately, this book did not work for me. The appeal of a graphic novel is clear illustrations with text interspersed but this was GIANT blocks of text on the page, I didn’t like the quality of the illustrations. I did not end up finishing this book because it was too difficult to read.

Patchwork by Kate Evans was set to combine illustrations and provide readers with an biography of Jane Austen. However, the illustrations, particularly, those that focus on people failed did not bring any additional charm to the book. The illustrations were distracting and did not match the narrative and/or its typography made it hard to follow the key points in Jane Austen's life. This cause me to stop reading the book despite my interest in the subject matter.

I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

For someone that has never read the classic Pride and Prejudice and knows virtually nothing about the author and her life, this graphic novel was quite a refreshing perspective. The author of this graphic novel has painstakingly pieced or “patchworked” together the narrative from the different accounts, letters, and works of Jane Austen herself, and thus some of it is fictional. Overall, an intriguing read about one of the most famous authors of our time.

#ThxNetGalley #KateEvans #Patchwork

informative slow-paced
Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0 Stars

I think the only truly positive thing I have to say about this book is that it was incredibly thorough. It dove deeply into the minutia of Jane Austen's life, in my opinion, so much so that it negatively impacted the storytelling.
For a graphic novel, I found the giant blocks of text very distracting and hard to read. And in the cases where Austen's books are being summarized over several pages, I often found myself, as someone who has read her works previously, skimming over large portions of the page.
The middle act of the story, which explored the history and anguish behind the fabrics, felt completely disconnected from the rest of the story. While from the cover, chapter breaks, and name, I would have assumed fabrics and sewing would have played a bigger part in the story, but instead felt shoehorned in. Outside of two instances I can recall, Jane rarely, if at all, interacts with fabrics to the level that the theme felt appropriate.

I also did not find myself able to connect with the art style for the vast majority of the book. Both in part by the art being constantly broken up by the bricks of text, but also because I found the artist's depictions of characters to be grotesque. I cannot argue that they have talent, but how they chose to illustrate the face in particular felt strangely warped and distended. The exception being the center portion of the story that explored the history of the fabrics mentioned, while still not to my taste for some of the illustrations, it had arguably the few moving and beautiful pieces in the entire book.

My favourite part of the whole thing was probably the footnotes at the end, which provided a lot of much-needed context, as well as being laid out in a much easier-to-read format and font.

Not for me as a more casual fan of Jane Austen and her works, but I imagine it may be more enjoyable for those more interested in the nitty-gritty.

This read was such a creative way of depicting the life of the one and only Jane Austen. The artwork added a witty and cheerful vibe to the overall reading experience that completely hooks the reader from start to finish. I was impressed as well about how much I didn't know about Jane Austen. The author did a magnificent job of really delving into research about the classical author's life and how she became the woman she was. For anyone who is a fan of the author and her works, I recommend not passing up on this golden opportunity of a read.

As a reader who maybe has not read as much Austen as she should have, I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It was a a beautifully drawn and told story, with the storytelling element of the patchwork to mirror the kind of scraps we know about her life, i think was a nice touch.


on storygraph - https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/0c42ed7e-63ca-41de-aef7-93590492dc1b

This was an interesting read as someone who doesn't know much about Jane Austen but the books she's written. The art style was very pretty to look at, but I felt there was too much writing on the page. It made it a little difficult to read and felt like a lot of a graphic novel. I do also want to note that I appreciated the translations on some of the pages.

This was such a well done graphic novel about Jane Austen and her family and writing with a bit more historical information about the era in which Austen lived. There was so much detail in the illustrations. The way this book was written and illustrated makes the reader laugh and cry and feel for Jane and her family. Previous to reading, I had watched a series about Jane Austen's sisters, connecting their story to the books Jane published. It was nice to have an insight on the family members, even if one was fictional and this graphic novel was more of a biography.
Thank you to the author/illustrator, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

"Patchwork" is a stylized biography of Jane Austen in graphic novel from. I really liked how the quilt was used as a way to structure the story. There are plenty of Easter eggs for Austen fans to find in the text and the art. I'm not the biggest fan of how the humans were drawn, but the settings and objects were drawn beautifully. I could have done without the summaries of the novels since I'm reading them all this year, but I did enjoy that some of the juvenilia was illustrated. Overall, I thought this was a really clever graphic biography.

There is too much writing on the page and the layout can make it hard to read as the writing is smushed to fit around the art. The writing also tries to be written as if for a younger audience, but again, for a graphic novel, too much text is on the page.

Patchwork is a visually stunning and emotionally rich graphic biography of Jane Austen, told through the lens of the patchwork quilt she created late in life. Kate Evans seamlessly combines art, humor, and historical detail to bring Austen’s world to life. With deep reverence and an eye for accuracy, she explores how the author's life, books, and the society she lived in all connect. A standout for fans of Austen and graphic storytelling alike.

Patchwork is a graphic biography telling the story of Jane Austen's life, loosely following the theme of a quilt that Jane created during her life. I personally did not really enjoy the art style of this book, but found it didn't take away from the story. I didn't know much about Jane Austen's life before reading Patchwork, and even though her life was not necessarily very eventful I found the story gripping. The characters feel very real, and it is very easy to relate to them and sympathise with them.

If you want to know more about Jane Austen's life, this is a really easy read and a great place to start.

There are lots of useful notes at the end of the book referencing where quotes have been taken from and where information for historical events is found.

Thanks to NetGalley for a review copy.

3.5 Stars

It's obvious a lot of work went into Patchwork. The art style alone, watercolors, and mixed media, is charming. I saw some other reviewers were turned off by facial expressions, but, to me, the art feels very much of the time period and history it's exploring. The inclusion of fabric throughout the narrative is brilliant on multiple levels.

The storytelling walks the line between modern language and an Austenesque style. I feel it helps in establishing the tone. My only real dig is at the pacing of the writing and chapters. When they're well-paced, the story moves along smoothly. Then there are pages with quite a bit of text that interrupt the flow, and I feel my brain struggling to keep up between the speech bubbles and the narration.

I appreciate that Evans uses 'The Interlude' to touch on how the luxuries of this time depended on the exploration of human and labor rights. British colonialism in Ireland and India, child labor, slavery in the Americas, and is able to relate them back to the Austen family as well as the worlds Jane creates in her stories.

With the many Jane Austen biographies coming out this year, I would say this one is up there. It's definitely worth taking a look at if your library is looking to refresh its Austen content.

Adult biographical graphic fiction - Thank you NetGalley and Verso Books for this advanced copy.

Patchwork (2025) by Kate Evans. Thanks to the author, Verso, and Net Galley for the early look at a work scheduled for release October 2025.

I have loved Kate Evans’s work. Her Red Rosa in particular I appreciated as deeply researched, nuanced and beautifully illustrated. Patchwork is just as deeply researched, working hard to get close to our “being there” in the world of a woman we really know little about, in spite of countless biographies. There are really few archival records of her short life. I just read Austen scholar Jeanine Barchas’s graphic novel version of Austen’s life and thought it was good, and I’m a fan of her illustrator Isabel Greenburg, but this is for my money far better, imho. Barchas’s book focuses on Jane’s close relationship with sis Cassandra, and Evans uses that angle, too, because we have more information on that relationship than any others, and it was of course the key relationship of her life. Barchas tries to get in refs to the books when she can, and highlights Jane’s snarky sense of humor, but Evans makes greater strides at linking themes across books, grounding her analysis in a socioeconomic critique of Austen’s England at the time.
So what do you do when you know so little? You create a patchwork quilt of a life. I am no longer a fan of just straightforward chronological renderings of a life, year by year, cradle to the grave, especially for artists. Be innovative if you are writing about innovators! And Evans does. Using the trope of a quilt such as the one Austen spent time making in her later years, Evans allows herself to piece together different elements, without filling in every gap she finds in the life narrative.

“. . . diamonds/compressed carbon/sparkling crystals/formed from the hard facts of Austen’s life. . . snip snip” (a patchwork quilt)

Austen faced poverty at various times in her life. She was screwed over by publishers--Did you know, as a woman in the early nineteenth-century, her name was on NONE of her work!!?--given little money, but with the help of more influential males--Henry, in particular--we do thankfully get to read her books! I like it that Evans critiques the patriarchal limitations of her age, and the economic limitations of the time for lower classes.
*Mom doesn’t come off so warm and cuddly in this bio--we always like Dad more in her bio and as autofictionally depicted in her novels, though being a mother of multiple children was never easy. Jane was sent off for two early years of her life to be raised by a neighbor. Too many kids at home, okay, but mother rarely visited her! She was sent off to boarding school, too, with Cassie. We meet disabled brother George, without speech. Interesting how disability would have been seen a couple centuries ago.

One critical strength of this manuscript (that I’ll admit not everyone may like) is the fragmented nature of this biographical quilt, though this is one thing I most liked about it. I am kinda sick of the cradle to the grave, year by year biographical approach. One example of what some readers may not like but I especially liked is the "linen" section, through which we see how England got its prized materials for dresses, and quilts--by screwing over people from countries they got it from. What’s the point here? Austen cares about class inequities, as seen in her novels, and Evans cares about class inequities, as seen also in her bio, Red Rosa, about Rosa Luxemburg.

I like the fact that Evans deeply researched this book, and illustrates with a period feel in mind. Evans is a great artist, in addition to being a great mind. She also recognizes and illustrates Austen’s great sense of humor throughout! And her wonderful relationship to her sister Cassie, obviously!

*The challenge in a biography that is also comics, is that there is so much text and info to dump, and there is indeed a lot of text, but I'll still say it works very well, is so impressive. Finally, what all readers want and what we get is a focus on the works themselves, on how they emerged from her life and reading. And that is satisfying.

*I like being reminded of Austen’s struggles to get published, her early failures in writing that she learned from.

*Evans says if you are not an Austen reader (yet) begin with Northanger Abbey and Pride, and then move to Emma and Persuasion. My faves have always been Pride, Persuasion, and Emma, in that order.

*Ah, that mystery man at the sea--Jane’s one short summer romance? Then what happens? No one knows, alas. Cassie burned most of her letters after her death.

*Sick in 1815, dead in 1817 at 42. (Death at 42??!!)

*Austen could have later become a darling of the literary establishment, but she wanted none of it, would have felt awkward, so no to salons.

*Evans says that Deirdre Le Faye wrote the definitive biography of Austen in 2004.

*Finally, at the center of the book visually is Jane Austen’s quilt, the central metaphor or trope of the book.

I say Patchwork is one of the great graphic works of the year.

Book Review: Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for an ARC copy of this book.
It always pains me to read or watch depictions of Jane Austen’s life — which is a bit ironic, considering she’s been one of my favorite authors since I was in middle school. Now, as a PhD student, my admiration for her has only deepened, and so has my heartbreak over the life she lived. Austen's biography is often quietly tragic: the displacement, the instability, the financial precarity, the limited options for women, and how much she had to sacrifice just to write. Even though Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility found success in her lifetime, most of her work only truly flourished after her death. I often wonder how different things might have been had she lived long enough to see her work become the international treasure it is today.

Reading Patchwork — a graphic biography that reimagines Austen’s life through textile, form, and layered history — felt unlike any other Austen biography I’ve encountered. The storytelling through patchwork was so moving, intimate, and visually striking. I loved it — too much, honestly — and found myself crying more than once. The artwork is both bold and delicate, perfectly aligned with the theme and tone of the book. It felt like a love letter to Austen, but also an unflinching look at the world she lived in and the ones she left out of her stories.

What truly set Patchwork apart for me was its willingness to explore the invisible threads — the colonial, racial, and class realities — woven into Austen’s time and legacy. I’ve long felt discomfort about how British imperialism, especially in the Regency era, is so often glossed over in biographies and adaptations. The book did not shy away from confronting this history. It made space for the voices that are usually ignored: the Indian weavers exploited by the East India Company, the Irish peasants dispossessed of their land, the working-class children trapped in brutal labor. These stories were told with such urgency and care.

There’s a section that left me breathless:

“The British East India Company agent stands by the door of the weaver’s hut… He gives less than the debt the weaver already owes… Debt that will be passed on to the weaver’s sons and his sons’ sons…”

Reading those lines, I felt a deep ache — a reminder of how violence is perpetuated through systems that seem mundane on the surface: trade, fashion, domestic life. The muslin so often romanticized in Austen’s novels? It came from this violence. It was made through the labor of people who were robbed not just of their work, but of futures. This biography refuses to let that be forgotten.

I also deeply appreciated the critique of the British entitlement over other lands, and the assumption of racial and cultural superiority — a mindset that defined the empire and its literary elite. Austen may have abhorred slavery, as the book points out, but can we really separate the comforts of her world — and of her characters — from the colonial exploitation that funded it?

The biography also reflects on the Irish resistance — and heartbreakingly, Henry Austen’s role in suppressing it:

“Arraigning, detaining, deporting and executing the United Irishmen.”
These truths are so rarely touched on, even in more scholarly work.

And yet, this isn’t a book that aims to cancel Austen or diminish her genius. Instead, it widens the lens, complicates the narrative, and gently but powerfully challenges us to hold multiple truths at once. Yes, Austen was brilliant. Yes, she crafted characters and novels that endure. But also: the comforts, wealth, and imagined tranquility of her worlds came with hidden costs, often borne by the colonized, the poor, and the voiceless.

This book captures what I’ve always felt — that Jane Austen’s work is beautiful and moving, but also incomplete.

“Did Mr Darcy build Pemberley without income from West Indian investments?”
“Where is the line between imagination and reality, when a legal fiction can, with the stroke of a pen, condemn people to be properties?”

Patchwork doesn’t try to answer all these questions. Instead, it stitches them together, piece by piece, into a biography that is both an ode and an interrogation. It gave me space to love Austen while also reckoning with the world she lived in and the worlds her work left out.

It’s one of the most moving, thought-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. I’ll be returning to it — and weeping — again.