Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Austen
-
Standard Name: Austen, Jane
Birth Name: Jane Austen
Pseudonym: A Lady
Styled: Mrs Ashton Dennis
JA
's unequalled reputation has led academic canon-makers to set her on a pedestal and scholars of early women's writing to use her as an epoch. For generations she was the first—or the only—woman to be adjudged major. Recent attention has shifted: her balance, good sense, and humour are more taken for granted, and critics have been scanning her six mature novels for traces of the boldness and irreverence which mark her juvenilia. Her two unfinished novels, her letters (which some consider an important literary text in themselves), and her poems and prayers have also received some attention.
One reviewer of this novel took the hint offered by CH
's frequent reference to her aunt, and pronounced that she was allied to Jane Austen
by genius as well as by blood.
Sutherland, Kathryn. Jane Austen’s Textual Lives from Aeschylus to Bollywood. Oxford University Press.
270
Literary responses
E. M. Hull
Patricia Raub
views The Sheik as the precursor of the mass-marketed romances initiated by Harlequin Romance novels in 1957.
Raub, Patricia. “Issues of Passion and Power in E. M. Hull’s <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The Sheik</span>”;. Women’s Studies, Vol.
21
, pp. 119-28.
123
The plot line which pits a young, beautiful, inexperienced, and aristocratic heroine against a tall...
Literary responses
Violet Hunt
VH
's associate Rebecca West
had strong praise for Their Lives. In a review in the Daily News on 7 March 1917, she called it a work of art. She found in it a...
Literary responses
Rachel Hunter
The Critical Review offered its warm commendation on the volume.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
3rd ser. 1 (1804): 118
Jane Austen
's teasing response to The Spoiled Child in particular appears in her own twelve-year-old niece's proudly claiming that...
Literary responses
Rachel Hunter
This novel was the second of RH
's to be affectionately mocked by Jane Austen
. Austen sent her niece the future Anna Lefroy
a letter purportedly for delivery to RH
herself, in the formal...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Catherine Hutton
CH
was reading Jane Austen
: at this stage she saw Austen's novels as trifles, but agreeable ones.
Hutton, Catherine. Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century. Editor Beale, Catherine Hutton, Cornish Brothers.
175
Textual Features
Catherine Hutton
CH
had come seriously to admire Jane Austen
: Her novels are pictures of common life, something like mine, but much more varied, and her character is either something like mine, or what I would...
Occupation
Catherine Hutton
As well as collecting illustrations of costume, CH
was an early collector of autographs. (She began both these collections at a young age, but presumably had to start again from scratch after her losses in...
Textual Features
Catherine Hutton
Of particular value in CH
's letters are her comments on literature. She offered detailed views on (probably) Elizabeth Heyrick
's Exposition, a pamphlet about economics, admiring the language while doubting Heyrick's capacity to...
Performance of text
Aldous Huxley
Austen
's Pride and Prejudice was released in the USA by MGM
as a Hollywood film, with screenplay by AH
and others.
Parker, Peter, editor. A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers. Oxford University Press.
357
The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). http://www.imdb.com.
Publishing
Aldous Huxley
Later that year he was hired again to adapt Jane Austen
's Pride and Prejudice for the big screen—though when England and Germany went to war he briefly tried to renege on the contract, feeling...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Inchbald
A Simple Story was praised by no less a modern authority than Q. D. Leavis
,
and received a more recent accolade from Terry Castle
as the most elegant English fiction...
Performance of text
Elizabeth Inchbald
It was published by the end of the year, at the same time as a rival version by Stephen Porter
which used both titles (Lovers' Vows; or, The Child of Love) and which...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Inchbald
The Critical covered EI
's version (which had a staggering run of forty-two performances) and Stephen Porter's in the same review.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2d ser. 24 (1798): 431
It was Inchbald's translation round which Jane Austen
built...
