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.
PF
's publications in the scholarly field include an edition of The Novel on Blue Paper, an unfinished, unpublished work by William Morris
, 1982, and the introduction to a new issue of Oxford University Press
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.
PF
is on record as saying of her two genres of choice: I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both. Novels, on the other hand, are often...
Travel
Eliza Fletcher
In her eighties, travelling with her youngest daughter, she visited Winchester Cathedral and the shrine
Southam, Brian. “Jane Austen and Winchester Cathedral”. Persuasions, Vol.
24
, pp. 226-40.
226
of her admired Jane Austen
.
Southam, Brian. “Jane Austen and Winchester Cathedral”. Persuasions, Vol.
24
, pp. 226-40.
226-7
Family and Intimate relationships
Eliza Fletcher
She said she was wrapped up in her children. Though she never could command the patience that qualified me to be their teacher, I delighted in making them my happy and confidential companions.
Fletcher, Eliza. Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh. Editor Mary, Lady Richardson, Printed at the offices of C. Thurman for private circulation.
76
They...
Textual Production
E. M. Forster
EMF
published Abinger Harvest, a collection of essays which includes Notes on the English Character, several pieces on India, and criticism of particular writers, including Jane Austen
.
Burra, Peter. “Mr E. M. Forster Past & Present”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 1781, p. 239.
239
Kirkpatrick, Brownlee Jean. A Bibliography of E. M. Forster. Clarendon.
47-8
Intertextuality and Influence
Antonia Fraser
Fraser quotes here from Eliot
's tribute in Middlemarch to the silent influence of those who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Fraser, Antonia. The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England. Methuen.
xiii
She opens the book proper with a submerged...
Literary responses
Georgiana Fullerton
Henry Fothergill Chorley
, reviewing the novel for the Athenæum, found Grantley Manorhaunted by the intertextual spectre of Jane Austen
's Emma; he also drew parallels with Frances Burney
's Cecilia...
Textual Production
Georgiana Fullerton
GF
enjoyed a high literary and personal reputation during and immediately after her life. One article, published soon after her death in The Catholic World, compared her favourably with Jane Austen
, and claimed...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Gardam
Most of these stories inhabit JG
's familiar territory among suburban women of a certain age, but other protagonists are very different: a dirty old tramp, a reluctant male homosexual, and, in the title story...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Gaskell
Critic Jenny Uglow
argues that My Lady Ludlow is an important—an original and brave
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber.
468
book—although its experiment in creating a feminine fiction based on women's lives, carefully observed, is not entirely successful. In terms...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Gaskell
Reviews were extremely positive. Most expressed a sense of loss to English letters at EG
's recent death, and compared Wives and Daughters to her other well-loved book, Cranford. The Athenæum likened the style...
Performance of text
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Genlis' daughters gave performances of these plays to large audiences (up to five hundred people).
Dow, Gillian. “Books owned by Jane Austen’s niece, Caroline, donated to Chawton House Library”. The Female Spectator, Vol.
1 n.s.
, No. 4, pp. 1-3.
2
The work was several times translated into English (beginning in late 1780) as The Theatre of Education. A...
Intertextuality and Influence
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Mary Wollstonecraft
, though she saw many virtues in this book, was not happy that Adelaide was educated to be obedient, not independent-minded: that with all her accomplishments she was ready to marry any body...
