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.
Edward Copeland
thinks that this is the most challenging of LCB
's novels because of the complex interrelationship, in Delamere, between aristocratic pastimes, the arts, and the Whig aristocracy. He sees the amateur theatricals as...
Literary responses
Penelope Fitzgerald
This volume prompted A. S. Byatt
to call its author Jane Austen
's nearest heir.
“Flamingo Press advertisement for ’The Means of Escape’ by Penelope Fitzgerald”. London Review of Books, p. 21.
21
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Bowen
, in her laudatory review, likened the icy sharpness of ICB
's dialogue to the sound of glass being swept up one of these London mornings after a blitz.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
This novel elicited a wide range of responses from reviewers. John Middleton Murry
consoled EA
when she received harsh criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. He told her there was no way to protect...
Literary responses
Maria Jane Jewsbury
The warmest appreciation of MJJ
's Austen
criticism came from George Henry Lewes
in July 1859. He also, however, attributed the piece to Whately
when he quoted extensively from it in an essay on Austen
Literary responses
Ethel Wilson
Negative reviews seemed to repeat Macmillan
's original worry that the collection was half-cooked. Aunt Topaz was characterized by the Canadian Forum as a terrible bore, whom the reviewer found almost as tiresome to...
Literary responses
George Eliot
John Morley
, anonymously in the Saturday Review, noted that [o]ne of the puzzles, which runs pathetically through Felix Holt as through Romola and the The Mill on the Floss, is the evil...
Literary responses
Isak Dinesen
When this, like ID
's first book, became a Book-of-the-Month Club
choice, she felt it would cheapen the recognition awarded the earlier work—showing that she misinterpreted this commercial honour as a purely critical one.
Thurman, Judith. Isak Dinesen: The Life of Karen Blixen. Penguin.
312
Literary responses
Isabella Neil Harwood
This novel generated a large amount of attention and positive reviews. They all made some points in common: they loved the plot, the way Minnie/Minna's character developed, the originality and the sustained interest it provided...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
In a negative review in the Sunday Times (headed The Loneliness of Miss Pym), Anita Brookner
described Pym's tone and characterizations as coldly detached and reductive, and complained of a determined sexlessness of the...
Literary responses
Anne Mozley
George Eliot
not only praised this review in a letter, but also instructed her publisher to send a copy of her next novel, The Mill on the Floss, to Bentley's
expressly so that it...
Literary responses
Harriette Wilson
Admiration of HW
as a writer united historian Eric Hobsbawm
and editor Karl Miller
. Miller judged the memoirs a well-written serious work, as much a work of social history, a study of class and...
Literary responses
Frances Trollope
FT
's rambunctious widow was greatly admired by both her male and female readership. Even the Athenæum, which was usually unsupportive of her work, offered a positive review: [s]o frequently has it been our...
Literary responses
Diana Athill
Through her great age and greater panache DA
became something of a cult figure. Edward Field
wrote that she functioned for the British public as the Chief Guide to Old Age.
Field, Edward. “Edward Field’s Introduction”. Letters to a Friend, p. xi - xx.
xx
She was awarded...
Literary responses
Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
Jane Austen
called this novel very good and clever, but tedious.
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press.
