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.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
207
The novel is both gothic and parody gothic, and uses science fiction as a vehicle for the discussion of ideas. The story is told from...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Taylor
As a child Betty Coles (later ET
) wrote plays (with very short scenes each demanding a new and elaborate setting) and stories. She said she always wanted to be a novelist.
qtd. in
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne, 1985.
2
At twelve...
Intertextuality and Influence
Penelope Lively
Some stories are neatly turned but may seem a little perfunctory, like Abroad, about entitled young people, or Mrs Bennet after Austen
's character, about the continuing pressure for girls to marry or for...
Intertextuality and Influence
Stella Benson
For a period of time after Goodbye, Stranger, SB
did very little writing but a great deal of reading, including the novels of Jane Austen
. She said she felt extremely middle-aged
qtd. in
Bedell, R. Meredith. Stella Benson. Twayne, 1983.
11
at...
Intertextuality and Influence
Susan Ferrier
The Inheritance opens with what sounds like an allusion to Jane Austen
: It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that there is no passion so deeply rooted in human nature as that of pride.
qtd. in
Cullinan, Mary. Susan Ferrier. Twayne, 1984.
75
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Rhoda Broughton
Critics have pointed to a range of influences and allusions in this novel. Kate Flint
has suggested that the representation of the sorrowful-eyed aesthete Francis Chaloner was a satiric jab at Oscar Wilde
, who...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Ham
The story opens with the young Englishwoman Rhoda Ford (the unbeautiful one of two sisters) and her family in the west of Ireland, where her father has an entrepreneurial scheme. They try to come...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Before beginning this novel she asked the advice of her stepson Martin Amis
to help her choose between this and a present-day version of Austen
's Sense and Sensibility. He opted unhesitatingly for the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Mozley
These attractive essays in belles lettres employ a relaxed, personal speaking voice (which does not, however, reveal its gender), which puts forward literary opinions with casual confidence. Many essays (like Samuel Johnson
's before them)...
Intertextuality and Influence
P. D. James
PDJ
followed the English tradition of detective-story writing that has continued from the 1920s and 1930s, a genre in which many women have held dominant positions. She spoke of her adolescent reading as influenced in...
Intertextuality and Influence
Stella Gibbons
The plot opens when the young, urban, highly civilised, bossy London heroine, Flora Poste, decides (when her parents die leaving her an unexpectedly small income) to live off her exaggeratedly rustic Sussex relations. (Flora admires...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emily Eden
EE
's preface explains that she first set this novel in what was then the present day: the pre-Reform-Bill, pre-railway era. She did not wish to update it in revising, so it is now set...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Strutt
Influence of Frances Burney
's Evelina is perceptible here, and influence of Jane Austen
seems at least a possibility: a family estate is named Maple Grove, as in Emma, and the heroine's marriage to...
Intertextuality and Influence
Beatrix Potter
BP
was not content with her success as a children's writer, but hankered to establish herself as an author for adults. Her references in her private writings to Burney
(a propos of her first appearance...
