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.
EMD
's charming, witty novels are characterized by acute observation and good-humoured social satire. Her stories often draw from her own experiences—as an Edwardian débutante, a novice in a religious order, a war worker, and...
Residence
E. M. Delafield
Virginia Woolf
did, however, visit EMD
, and wrote to her niece in November 1935 that Delafield lives in an old house like a character in Jane Austen
; whom she adores. But she has...
Literary responses
E. M. Delafield
Punch gave the novel a very positive review, which Heinemann
used in their advertising: An almost uncannily penetrating study of the development of a poseuse. Told with remarkable insight and a care that is both...
Intertextuality and Influence
E. M. Delafield
The novel presents a conflict of values between an optimist, a benign canon whose five children have trouble living under his Victorian principles, and a cynic, a World War One veteran who has published an...
Material Conditions of Writing
E. M. Delafield
In the year of this publication, 1935, Virginia Woolf
wrote to her niece, Angelica Bell
, I've been seeing E. M. Delafield who writes The Provincial Lady: she is called Dashwood really; Elizabeth Dashwood; and...
Literary responses
Anita Desai
Donna Seaman
, reviewer for Booklist, invoked the comparison of AD
to Austen
and acknowledged some substance to the parallel: indeed, she is a deceptively gracious storyteller, writing like an embroiderer concealing a sword...
Textual Production
Monica Dickens
Her other introductions to literary works include one to a paperback edition of Austen
's Mansfield Park in 1972.
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, 1984.
312
Publishing
Margaret Drabble
On Jane Austen
's birthday, MD
's The Dower House at Kellynch: A Somerset Romance appeared in the journal Persuasions.
Drabble, Margaret. “The Dower House at Kellynch: A Somerset Romance”. Persuasions, Vol.
15
, 1993, pp. 75-88.
75-88
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Drabble
Imagery of postpartum fluidity, particularly lactation, characterizes the lovers' growing passion and the descriptions of female sexual desire and orgasm. The narrative alternates between a schizoid third-person dialogue
Drabble, Margaret. The Waterfall. Penguin, 1971.
130
and first-person narration as Jane attempts...
Textual Features
Margaret Drabble
Frances Wingate is accustomed to working with ancient bones, to conferences in distant countries and interviews in glossy magazines—also to sudden plunges into howling despair. For reasons she does not understand, she has ended a...
Textual Features
Margaret Drabble
Speaking at a Jane Austen
conference in 1993, MD
said that in this book she was doing something entirely new for her, in moving into, or close to, the occult.
Textual Production
Margaret Drabble
MD
made her journalism debut early. In 1967 she wrote in the Guardian about the accomplishment of the sexual revolution brought about by the contraceptive pill. It was a major component of women's liberation, she...
Textual Features
Sara Jeannette Duncan
The Imperialist features a double-stranded plot focusing on a Canadian brother and sister. Lorne Murchison pursues a connection with Britain through formal trade agreements while Advena Murchison unites the countries with bonds of affection when...
Education
Nell Dunn
ND
was educated at a convent school, which she left at the age of fourteen. Reading of some texts which were vital to her experience—Jane Austen
and Jean-Paul Sartre
—came after she had left...
