Radovici's Jane Austen & Tom Lefroy Petition

Finally, the Radovici Petition or ‘Radovici's Jane Austen & Tom Lefroy Petition’ is uploaded! We need your help, dear friends, to make this little precious book re-printed again, and hence we ask for your help to click on the Petition Online and leave your signatures there. Please spread the words… Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy need you. Not only it’s homage to the Romanian authoress Nadia Radovici who has passed away a few years ago; the book is also an incredible source and bases of Jane/Tom research, however under-used it is now. The petition text is as follows:

Dear Sir/Madam/Friends,

On behalf of Becoming Jane Fansite and fans of Jane Austen/Tom Lefroy alike, I would like to raise your concerns on the very limited number of available literatures on the romance and plight of Jane Austen with Thomas Langlois Lefroy (also known as Tom Lefroy). It is, sadly, not the truth universally acknowledged that the famous English authoress once shared a poetic chaste love with the young poor Irishman who later would become the renowned Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. Several biographers have attempted to explore their beautiful but tragic relationship, e.g. Claire Tomalin (‘Jane Austen: a Life’, 2000) and Jon Spence (‘Becoming Jane Austen’, 2003). The movie ‘Becoming Jane’ (BBC & Miramax, 2007) has also taken the chaste romance between Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy a step further.

In 1995, however, another writer had actually written a short but memorable book exploring interesting facts and speculations about Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy’s love story. The 80-pages book was titled ‘A Youthful Love: Jane Austen & Tom Lefroy?’, published by Merlin Books in Devon, UK, and written by Nadia Radovici. Radovici did not only explore common facts about Tom Lefroy known from Austen’s letters but also unnoticed connections to Tom excavated from Austen’s novels.

Alas, Radovici passed away circa the year 2000 without having her book widely known or distributed. Now, Radovici’s book is out of print; its copy is very hard to find, even in second-hand markets. We, Jane Austen lovers who support the idea of chaste romance between her and Tom Lefroy, share the loss of a good book that has become one of the bases for more rigorous research on Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy. Granted, more and more information on Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy has been compiled as of late beyond the scope of Radovici’s discussions. Nevertheless, we are still indebted to her book, and hence we ask any potential publishers to reprint Radovici’s book and make it widely available for the public to read.

Pic: cover to Radovici's 1995 book, out of print