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.
EJ
was one of the founders of the Jane Austen Society
, launched in 1940. She campaigned for the purchase (achieved in 1947) of the cottage at Chawton in Hampshire where Austen
lived for her...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Jenkins
The novel was criticised by some for its exclusively upper-middle-class reach—a view which was energetically countered by Rose Macaulay
on a radio programme.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson.
107
The Times Literary Supplement welcomed with joy a novel where the...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ
contributed an introduction to a volume, the seventh in John Lehmann
's The Chiltern Library, published in 1947 and containing two titles by Elizabeth Gaskell
. In her introduction to Thackeray
's Vanity...
Education
F. Tennyson Jesse
Though FTJ
did not receive much formal education, she read voraciously. Important discoveries were theBrontësisters
, Jane Austen
, and Constance Garnett
's translations of Tolstoy
.
Colenbrander, Joanna. A Portrait of Fryn. A. Deutsch.
The Athenæum published MJJ
's essay on the literary career of Jane Austen
, thought to be the first substantial, formal, printed comment on her work by a woman.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Fryckstedt, Monica Correa. “The Hidden Rill: The Life and Career of Maria Jane Jewsbury, II”. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Vol.
67
, No. 1, The Library, pp. 450-73.
465
Publishing
Maria Jane Jewsbury
Henry Austen
, the source of many of MJJ
's opinions about his sister
, recycled parts of this piece for Bentley
's new edition of Austen
's novels in 1833. (He omitted MJJ
's...
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
Long, Robert Emmet. The Films of Merchant Ivory. Harry N. Abrams.
108
Sucher, Laurie. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: The Politics of Passion. Macmillan.
240
Material Conditions of Writing
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
This venture was triggered by the appearance on the market of Austen
's juvenile play Sir Charles Grandison, itself an adaptation from the novel by Samuel Richardson
. London Weekend Television
acquired an option...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The film shows the play being auctioned, and bought by an Off-Broadway group who produce it in Absurdist style. While they work at it, period motifs in the plot (notably the abduction of Harriet Byron)...
Literary responses
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
RPJ
was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, 1976, the Neil Gunn International Fellowship in earlier 1979, a MacArthur Foundation Grant in 1983, and a CBE in 1998.
Sucher, Laurie. The Fiction of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: The Politics of Passion. Macmillan.
242, 3
Long, Robert Emmet. The Films of Merchant Ivory. Harry N. Abrams.
25
Gates, Anita. “Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Screenwriter, Dies at 85”. The New York Times.
She attracted less critical attention in...
Leisure and Society
Jennifer Johnston
Although JJ
says she is always reading contemporary young men and women writers coming out of Ireland today,
Moloney, Caitriona et al. Irish Women Writers Speak Out: Voices From the Field. Syracuse University Press.
67
in her short list of her most beloved books Ireland is just outnumbered by England and...
Reception
Jennifer Johnston
Critic Imhof Rüdiger
attacked JJ
(then the author of seven published novels) in 1985, arguing that she urgently needed to find new themes, and that her work was being compromised through self-repetition.
Imhof, Rüdiger. “’A Little Bit of Ivory, Two Inches Wide’: The Small World of Jennifer Johnston’s Fiction”. Etudes Irlandaises, Vol.
10
, pp. 129-44.
Johnston classifies reviewers...
Intertextuality and Influence
E. B. C. Jones
The book positions itself in relation to cultural, social and emotional markers that are not those of a majority in later times. Helen and Felicia read Northanger Abbey aloud, and Helen admits it to be...