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.
LS read widely and intended to translate fiction by other Anglophone authors. In 1932, she began translating Austen
's Pride and Prejudice, but halted the project when she learned that one of her better-known...
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Alice Meynell
She often used this column to address the works of literary women of the past. She judged Jane Austen
inferior to Charlotte Brontë
, accepting Brontë's opinion that Austen lacked what she, by implication, possessed:...
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Michèle Roberts
In November 2011 MR
edited Wooing Mr Wickham, a collection of stories inspired by Jane Austen
or by Chawton House.
Roberts also selected the stories for this volume from those submitted to the...
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Mary Stockdale
MS
(as Miss Stockdale) issued through her father
's firmThe Family Book; or, Children's Journal, translated from the French of Arnaud Berquin
, Interspers'd with Poetical Pieces written by the Translator...
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Angela Thirkell
She also provided introductions for editions of Jane Austen
's Persuasion, 1946, William Makepeace Thackeray
's The Newcomes, 1954, and Anthony Trollope
's Barchester Towers, 1958.
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Catherine Fanshawe
The letters that CF
sent to Anne Grant
are not extant, but Grant's side of the correspondence leaves no doubt that the two were in constant dialogue about new books they had read, and their...
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Rebecca West
RW
produced several introductions to novels by other writers, including Jonathan Cape
's editions of Kathleen Coyle
's Liv (1929), Jane Austen
's Northanger Abbey (1932), and Sarah Orne Jewett
's The Only Rose and Other Tales (1937).
West, Rebecca. “Bibliography”. Rebecca West: A Celebration, edited by Samuel Hynes, Viking Press, pp. 761-6.
764-5
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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
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Q. D. Leavis
QDL
was arranging her lectures and essays on Jane Austen
into book form. Despite interest from publishers and although QDL
continued to write regularly on Austen, the monograph was never completed.
MacKillop, Ian. F.R. Leavis: A Life in Criticism. Allen Lane.
JA
published Mansfield Revisited, A Novel, a sequel to Austen
's Mansfield Park and a harbinger of escalation in fiction of this type.
“Joan Aiken”. Fantastic Fiction.
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.
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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...
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Georgette Heyer
GH
's next Regency romance, Bath Tangle (set in a place whose very name evokes Jane Austen
), features another heroine who needs special permission to marry.
Hodge, Jane Aiken. The Private World of Georgette Heyer. Bodley Head.