Patchwork is a unique biography of Austen. I enjoyed the artwork and the interweaving of the quilt throughout the book. Although I knew quite a bit about Jane's life before reading it, there were enough new tidbits to keep me engaged.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

I really liked this graphic biography that is so amazingly and richly detailed (though fiction, it’s still very factual). I didn’t love the artwork immediately, but it *(mostly)* grew on me throughout my reading and I learned some things I hadn’t previously known about one of my favorite authors.

An absolute recommendation for Janeites, students interested in learning more about the author, and anyone who enjoys graphic biographies.



Thank you to Verso and NetGalley for the DRC

Publishing date: 28.10.2025 (DD/MM/YYYY)
Thank you to NetGalley and Verso Books for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

I sadly did not like this book

Gripes:
- The artstyle is not my cup of tea. I found the people to be uncanny, the children had morphing forms from page to page and could look like a toddler in one page and a baby in another
- Some pages are wildly text heavy and crowded, could be spaced out or cut down a little
- I didn't always know where to start and continue reading on a page

Goods:
- Seems to be very factual (there are so many sources in the back)
- Would be a great resource for other writers or for education

I think I have to admit that this book isn't really for me. Others may appreciate it more.
Giving it 2 stars for being factual and citing its sources well, losing stars for the arstyle and being a too crowded on the pages.

Posted to Goodreads: 7/8/2025

For fans of Jane Austen, this book is a great way to better understand her life! It is presented through illustrations and sensible writing, giving you insight into the Austen family, and revealing potential inspiration for her novels. Reading this book, I learned a lot about how Jane lived and what her family was like. I also learned a lot about her books, and her pursuit of becoming a published author. One thing Jane Austen fans might find very intriguing is the Notes section at the back of the book, which provides context for pages within the graphic novel. What a treasure trove of information! I was given the opportunity to read this book through NetGalley, and I hope it finds others who will enjoy it as much as I did.

Historically accurate to the best of my knowledge, but the art was not good. At best it was odd, at worst it was creepy. It wasn't always immediately clear where i was supposed to read next. I didn't enjoy reading this.

This novel is illustrated in what looks like pencil, and feels like the illustrator doesn't know how to draw people. The art style was immediately off putting as a newborn baby looks like an alien and then a toddler very quickly back to back. Immediately wanted to DNF. Pages were collage like, rather than harsher more clearly divided comic panels. I put this down immediately based on illustrative style, but inside is a fictionalized account of patch worked together real life events. Some pages were very text heavy. The author heavily cited sources in the back, so this may be a great resource for a biography or history project. (MANY pages of notes and additional resources.)

Patchwork is a graphic biography of Jane Austen written and illustrated by Kate Evans using the motif of a patchwork coverlet sewn by Jane and other family members to narrate not just her life story but also give a perspective on the history of British colonisation in various parts of the world through the various fabrics used in the project, which I thought was a clever and unique idea and one I really appreciated. I also appreciated the thread of humour that was deftly woven through the project, there was a wry tone that really appealed to me and in some ways was reminiscent of the subject's own writing style. The illustrations are deceptively simple, looking like pencil drawings but with further scrutiny there is a good level of detail, however in some parts of the book I felt like the illustrations were overshadowed by too many blocks of text. I particularly liked the way that some of the illustrations were made to look like swatches of fabric or sewing projects, it worked well with the theme of the book and added a good extra dimension to the artwork. While the author takes pains to point out that the book, by its nature, is fiction there is a detailed notes section at the back that gives the historical sources used and it is clear that the author has endeavoured to be as faithful to the truth as is possible in a work of this nature.
I read an ARC courtesy of the NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I honestly have not finished the book. I may try to get into it more later. It did tell her life story in great detail. It had the look of a children's story book with nicely drawn pictures. It was more factual, I wish it would have been more written in story format.

What a fun book! The illustrations were brilliantly and beautifully done, some even incorporating patchwork and embroidery. I especially liked the large format illustrations that were used to strongly evoke a sense of time and place. The graphic format might make this biography more interesting for some readers, and this book would make a great addition to school libraries.

While this work is officially fiction, the broader narrative arc and characters are reproduced faithfully from what is known of Jane Austen's life, and a comprehensive endnotes section adds additional material and explains where creative liberties may have been taken. Most of the narration is written in an echo of Austen's distinctive style, imitating both her prose and her wit.

I appreciated the interlude, where the author explores the origins of the fabrics Austen might have used in her quilt. She examines colonialism, child labor, slavery, and other social justice issues of the time. Some readers might find this discussion uncomfortable, but it's important to confront the darker parts of our history (and of our present, for that matter).

This might be a bit difficult to read electronically, depending on your device. Some pages are quite intricate, with a lot of dialogue to parse out. If reading digitally, make sure you either have a large screen, or the capability to zoom in. I strongly recommend a color device, too - much would be lost by viewing these illustrations in grayscale.

3.5 rounded up! There was a lot to take in on every page and I think it will work better as a physical text than a digital one as I did struggle at times with the small text and it felt a little overwhelming to have so much on a page. I definitely appreciated the amount of information and research and passion this author obviously had and did! It's a very interesting way to learn about Austen's life and there was a lot I didn't know that I am interested in reading more about now.

The illustrations are vividly drawn and the storytelling of Jane Austen’s life and history is engaging as it blends with her literary works. Best parts were the stories of her childhood as well as the interlude where a break from Jane’s biography and a delve into the history of the textiles used for her patchwork which touches upon colonialism, slavery as well as child labour. Its a breezy light read that can be finished in one sitting.

A solid 3.75 star.

I loved this book so much that after looking at it I preordered it. I am organizing a display for Jane Austen at the local library, showing my Jane Austen quilts on the walls and Austen related ephemera and books in the display case, and I wanted this book included.

Evans offers a full biography of Jane Austen, but also includes the stories in her work, from her juvenilia through her novels.

The book title refers to the paper pieced quilt made by Jane, her sister Cassandra, and their mother. The quilt is a form of medallion quilt, with a larger central floral printed fabric, which is surrounded by diamond shapes sashed with a small dotted fabric, and an outer border of smaller diamond shapers sewn side by side. The fabrics would have been scraps from making clothing and household furnishings.

The method of construction is shown in the graphic novel, how the women cut paper templates and wrapped and sewed the fabric onto the papers before sewing them together. Evans doesn’t end there–she includes a history of where the fabrics were manufactured, and the slave labor behind the cotton plantations.

Also fascinating is how Evans developed her portraits of the Austens. She shares images showing what Jane may have looked like, including Cassandra’s sketch, non-authenticated portraits, and portraits of her brothers.

The images and story bring to life Jane’s world. Jane spent babyhood under the care of a tenant farmers. Returned to her family at age two, her life was busy with farm animals, her siblings, and the students who were tutored by the Rev. Austen. A whole page is dedicated to the siblings rolling down a grassy slope.

Preteen Jane’s love of the novel bloomed while her own family was filled with dramatic stories of hardship and luck and pluck and romance. Jane’s juvenilia is filled with drama and wit, which she read aloud, diverting her entire family. Soon, Jane was writing her first versions of her famous novels, all shared in this book.

Cassandra’s doomed love affair, an aunt’s thoughtless theft, leaving her childhood home and consequent inability to write, the death of her father–it’s all here. And finally, Chawton is offered by Edward, the brother adopted by a wealthy, childless couple. And in this peace and quiet and security, Jane’s words again flow from her pen. Perhaps, a love affair? For certain, the regret and backing off from an unsuitable but sensible marriage proposal.

Jane embroidered a sheer muslin shaw, cotton cloth from India. The British East India Company took over India’s cloth industry. Chintz fabric hand printed with ornate floral designs became the rage–the kind of fabrics seen in the quilt Jane worked on.

We learn about the cotton mills of Lancashire, in which generations of my Greenwood ancestors worked after machines replaced their home weaving industry. A child is shown crawling under the dangerous machine to rejoin a broken thread.

And then we are taken into the cottonfields of the American South where a female slave toils in the field, saving bits of fabric for patchwork. And we learn about the hidden source of wealth of characters in Jane’s books and family, money from trade and plantations in the Americas.

Jane publishes her books, garners her small fortune, finds some minor fame. And then, illness takes her health and life.


Along with her amazing novels, she left a quilt.


An early book on Austen I read pronounced that her life was common and uneventful! It was an image formed by her brother’s first narrative of her life, influenced by Victorian propriety. But there is nothing boring about her life, and I trust that this graphic biography will enthrall many readers.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

Kate Evans’ Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen kind of left me with conflicting feelings. On the one hand, this truly was something that I feel like I should have enjoyed a lot more than I actually did—and on the other, I was pretty engaged and intrigued by the story being told. And I think, in the end, that back and forth feeling of interest really encapsulates my entire experience reading this graphic novel.

Now, I have always deeply appreciated reading graphic novel biographies. This certainly wouldn’t be the first that I’ve read and I unfortunately have found over the years that these sort of books almost always run into the problem of overloading each page with far too much text. And I think this is largely due to the fact that it can, at times, be rather difficult to tell these stories within the typical format you see for graphic novels—dialogue. And so we end up with blocks of summary text that helps the biography aspect of the story, but does an absolute disservice to the medium in which that biography is being told.

Now, Evans actually did a pretty great job of trying to work around this. She included quiet a lot of dialogue between Jane and others around her and even incorporated quoted text from her novels to give us a few pages of straight dialogue. All of that said, the large blocks of text are still most glaringly one of the biggest issues with this graphic novel. The biggest, however, is the distinct jarring nature of the story’s flow. I just couldn’t help feeling that the book jumped around a lot, something that was most egregious when referencing this patchwork almost-quilt that Jane created with the help of her family. Ironically, the inspiration for the title and the entire thread that the author was hoping would connect each piece of Austen’s life was the number one thing in the book that I just couldn’t help feeling was painfully obvious in how unnecessary it was.

Lastly, though I say this for myself and not as an impact to the book’s overall rating, the artwork just wasn’t for me. It’s not a style that has typically ever appealed to me, featuring characters with outlandishly large heads all throughout. Though I appreciated the bit at the back that went over the look of each of the people alive through Jane’s life and even Jane, herself, even that wasn’t enough to endear me to the artwork as a whole.

All in all, a pretty decent graphic biography and one that I’m sure a great many Jane Austen fans will eagerly pick up and love reading, but it’s definitely the sort of thing that will appeal to specific tastes.

This book is my first experience with a "graphic biography" so I was quite enthralled by the discovery of a new genre as well. I really appreciated the effort that the author put in collecting sources on Jane Austen's life and in merging them to create a new narrative: the extent of her passion for this great English novelist is truly visible and shine through every page. I also really enjoyed the literary ploy of using the actual and metaphoric concept behind her patchwork blanket to "sew" together all people and events of her life.

With regard to the development of the story, the narration of Jane Austen's life itself did not really caught my attention, probably also because the pages are really packed with text, written in characters that are too small even for my taste. The general feeling was that the pages were too crowded, with some notable exceptions. I have to admit that the art style is not really my cup of tea as well.
However, given the fairly average tenor of the content, I was really pleasantly surprised when the author decided to devote several pages to those who were really involved in creating the famous fabric that acts as a narrative thread throughout the book. I really appreciated the prominence she gave to the themes of colonialism, slavery and child labour (as well as the taboo surrounding neurological diseases, in relation to one of Jane Austen's brothers and nephew).

I think I would recommend at least part of this book, which was a pleasant reading all in all.

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out in October. It was OK and very interesting. Life as an author was very different back then, and I think we often think Jane Austen had it easier than she had. I struggled reading the small letters.

Both Jane Austen fans and those interested in what life was like in Regency times will enjoy this book. I particularly liked the links to what life was like for those of different classes and those impacted by colonialism, who produced goods enjoyed in Britain. These were linked in through the quilt that Jane Austen is shown sewing throughout the book.

Inspired by a patchwork quilt Jane Austen made, Kate Evans takes us through a “fictional account of factual events” of Jane Austen’s life. Throughout the graphic novel, it is clear that Evans is a massive fan of Jane Austen’s work and she has put a lot of time, effort, and research into this novel. While I love both Jane Austen and graphic novels, I did not enjoy this book. The art is interesting, although not my style. If you love Jane Austen and text heavy graphic novels, you may really enjoy this book. 3 stars, rounded up for the intriguing artwork.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read Patchwork.

There are so many books written about Jane Austen that Kate Evans decided to show as well as tell the story of an author who is still inspiring people today even 250 years later. Evans does this with an engaging story told with not just words but art as well.