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.
Unfortunately as published it contains almost no dates. In the early pages DW
writes a deliberately commonplace style, but often records glimpses of people or overheard conversations for possible use in fiction. She relates the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ivy Compton-Burnett
This was a new influence added to those of the Victorian novelists (especially the women), Shakespeare
, and Jane Austen
, whom she admired extravagantly (Even her dull scraps are music to me)...
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
Viola Meynell
VM
moves away from theological influence here, as her prose becomes dispassionate and satiric. This novel lacks plot interest; its strength lies in its emotional texture. In a manner that has been likened to Jane Austen
Intertextuality and Influence
Penelope Lively
As controversy has been Henry's domain, reading has been Charlotte's. For ever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. Reading has taught her how sex...
Leisure and Society
Rumer Godden
With books hard to come by, RG
read and re-read those she had, often sent her by relatives and often new publications. She called Austenexactly what I need and likened herself to Emma.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. Macmillan.
207
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...
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Heyrick
In the year 1827 EH
's reading included all of Jane Austen
's completed novels and Mary Russell Mitford
's Our Village.
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers.
179
Leisure and Society
Edith Somerville
In her later years ES
set out to extend her reading. She tried Woolf
's A Room of One's Own (at the behest of Ethel Smyth
) and admired it. But she could not like...
Leisure and Society
Carola Oman
In a letter to the Times in 1962, CO
described a bookcase in her writing-room which held the works she described as All the Winners. For a writer of fairly conservative views and strong...
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
Literary responses
Lady Charlotte Bury
Edward Copeland
thinks that this is the most challenging of LCB
's novels because of the complex interrelationship, in Delamere, between aristocratic pastimes, the arts, and the Whig aristocracy. He sees the amateur theatricals as...
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.
21
Literary responses
Ethel Wilson
Negative reviews seemed to repeat Macmillan
's original worry that the collection was half-cooked. Aunt Topaz was characterized by the Canadian Forum as a terrible bore, whom the reviewer found almost as tiresome to...
Literary responses
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Bowen
, in her laudatory review, likened the icy sharpness of ICB
's dialogue to the sound of glass being swept up one of these London mornings after a blitz.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton.
