Persuasion: A Colors [sic] Primer (Little Miss Austen) by Jennifer Adams, Art by Alison Oliver

Well, first of all let’s make it clear that Alison Oliver has done nothing wrong.

The artwork in this charming at first look only board book (aimed at the awful kind of insufferable literary babies that my child, BB Whamathan, is destined to be) is absolutely fine.

Serviceable.

No issues with it.

No problems.

From the cover through to the single illustration that adorns each double page spread, the images provided by Oliver are clear, fun, unpretentious and absolutely include the colour that appears in the matching text. So, let’s be clear, the problem isn’t Oliver.

Because there is a problem.

There’s a fucking big problem, and I don’t mean the Americanised spelling of “colors” on the cover of this book allegedly based on an English novel and commercially available in Canada… Let the Americans spell things however they want, come on. Most of them don’t have much, down there, in America. Let them have their u-less colour. It’s the least we can do. So that isn’t the problem.

No, the big problem, the huge problem, the irrevocable and unignorable problem is that this book – this “Little Miss Austen” board book that claims to introduce the work of Jane Austen to babies – lies about its one base promise…

Every two page spread features, on the right hand side, an illustration of a location or a character or a feature from the novel Persuasion (by star of the English ten pound note, Jane Austen) with a tiny two or three word label underneath stating who – or what – this is meant to represent. All well and good and as expected.

On the opposite page – in big, big, print, the text that the book is tonally and visibly focusing upon – are always TWO words, an adjective (a colour) and a noun. I presumed – and I’d presume that most purchasers (and maybe even readers) of Persuasion: A Colors [sic] Primer would presume the same – that all of these colour and noun pairings would be raw, heady excerpts from Jane Austen’s infamous prose.

I’m afraid, literature fans, that this is bullshit, and NOT ONLY does Jennifer Adams’ text not quote directly from the novel nor quote from it haphazardly without correct formatting to indicate ellipses or excisions (which could be excusable as this is a book for babies, some of the world’s least discerning readers), but Adams uses MULTIPLE colours in her book that aren’t even mentioned in Persuasion at all (as verified by a family text search on the Project Gutenberg version of the novel)…

One of the illustrations shows a character in a green outfit, with the two word description: “SAGE DRESS”. The word “sage” does not appear in the novel.

We are shown a boat with “IVORY SAILS”. Ivory isn’t even mentioned as a material in Persuasion, let alone as a colour.

“BEIGE HOUSE”. No no no no no no no – not only was Austen not using the word “beige” as a colour, no one else was for a few more decades (according to Google’s Oxford University-backed etymology dictionary).

Austen was not an early adopter! Austen was not a powerhouse of neologisms! Austen was known for searing wit, psychological slash sociocultural insight and neat plotting, not for popularising new words for colours!

Adams does the same thing with the word “MAUVE” and though I can’t remember the noun that went with it (I’m on a train on the way to a job and I didn’t bring a baby’s board book with me), I do know (Wikipedia told me) that this wasn’t a popular word until 1859, by which point Austen had been dead for longer than I’ve been alive, and I’m so old that sometimes people look at me as if I’ve performed a miracle when I tell them I conceived a child within the last 18 months.

So, what this means is that the book contains nothing but lies.

False promises and lies.

This is not a heavily abridged version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. This isn’t a version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion at all.

The colours included in this primer aren’t colours with any connection to the novel, or with early 19th century life at all.

The public domain is the public domain as far as intellectual property goes, I get that, but it feels dishonest, cruel and unliterary to use the name and the work of Jane Austen – one of the few non-monarch women who the Bank of England deems good enough to put on its money – to sell copies of this colour primer (tbf it is useful as a colour primer) that has no deep or meaningful relationship to the original text of Persuasion.

It’s a trap, it’s a con, it’s a gimmick, for sick, sad, literary losers like me who dream of raising precocious, literate toddlers.

Avoid, lest ye be riven with riotous disgust like me.

This is not Jane Austen’s Persuasion for babies. This is not Jane Austen’s Persuasion at all.