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.
Her other introductions to literary works include one to a paperback edition of Austen
's Mansfield Park in 1972.
Textual Production
Joanna Trollope
JT
's modernised retelling of Sense and Sensibility (published in October 2013), is one of a series of projected Jane Austen
updates. In January 2014 Trollope discussed Austen in a podcast with Fay Weldon
in...
Textual Production
Charlotte Brontë
CB
's comments on Jane Austen
, whom she first read at this time, reflect her own literary priorities: She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously...
Textual Production
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
took a keen interest in the reputations of women writers. She planned in 1821 to write an essay on Miss Austen
's novels, which are by no means valued as they deserve
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
1: 357
Textual Production
Fay Weldon
FW
published Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen, a book whose contents are what its title suggests.
Faulks, Lana. Fay Weldon. Twayne.
71
Textual Production
Christina Stead
In 1972 CS
spent three painful months over a commission to review Quentin Bell
's life of Virginia Woolf
. She found many aspects and supposed aspects of Woolf repugnant: her alleged lack of appreciation...
Textual Production
P. D. James
PDJ
published a historical detective novel she said she wrote for fun and in order to combine two great enthusiasms (detection and Jane Austen
): Death Comes to Pemberley, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice.
Crown, Sarah. “A life in writing: PD James”. Guardian.co.uk.
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
Textual Production
Joanna Trollope
JA pursued her Austen
connection with a talk on her at a charity Christmas supper held at Chawton House Library
on 5 December 2015.
Textual Production
G. B. Stern
Sheila Kaye-Smith
and GBS
jointly published Talking of Jane Austen, an attempt at an informal record of their endless conversations about a novelist they both loved.
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery.
87
Textual Production
P. D. James
PDJ
gave the annual lecture to the Jane Austen Society
at Chawton House in Hampshire (where Austen
was a regular visitor); it was entitled Emma Considered as a Detective Story.
James, P. D. Time to Be in Earnest. Faber and Faber.
224, 250
Textual Production
Dorothy Richardson
In her correspondence Richardson addresses a great range of topics, including her own varied reading. She comments on women writers from Julian of Norwich
through Jane Austen
, Emily
and Charlotte Brontë
, George Eliot
Textual Production
Fay Weldon
In 2003 FW
contributed a foreword to a new edition of Austen
's juvenile Love and Freindship (which, unusually, corrects the title to Love and Friendship).
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production
Emma Tennant
ET
published two more sequels: Emma in Love, Jane Austen
's Emma Continued, and Elinor and Marianne, A Sequel to Sense and Sensibility.
Tennant, Emma. Emma in Love. Fourth Estate.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production
Sarah Tytler
In a single volume, ST
's Jane Austen
and Her Works offered a short biography and a plot summary of the major novels, interspersed with critical commentary.
