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.
The book reflects the Leavis's lofty tone about that large majority of authors who fail to measure up to the best.Jane Austen
was not given a section—because, F. R. Leavis insisted, she was too...
Textual Features
Maria Edgeworth
The title is ironic: the protagonist is an irritating simpleton (prefiguring Austen
's Mrs Bennet), whose very funny dialogue has its roots in ME
's Essay on . . . Self-Justification.
Butler, Marilyn. Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography. Clarendon, 1972.
320-2
According to...
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Catherine Hutton
CH
had come seriously to admire Jane Austen
: Her novels are pictures of common life, something like mine, but much more varied, and her character is either something like mine, or what I would...
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Jane West
The Danbury ladies take an avid interest in the arrival at a nearby mansion of Mr Dudley and one of his two daughters, whose mother is dead. Again the contrasted heroines (this time sisters) follow...
Textual Features
Anne Stevenson
In the title-poem, each of five stanzas ends with a version of the first closing lines: we thought we were living now, / but we were living then.
Stevenson, Anne. Selected Poems, 1956-1986. Oxford University Press, 1987.
128
These we, it seems, are...
Textual Features
Q. D. Leavis
Here QDL
discusses some of Oliphant's personal experiences, motives for publishing, and the lingering cultural resistance to women authors: we note that still, as in Jane Austen
's family and age, one of the conditions...
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Elizabeth Jane Howard
Passages in The Lover's Companion are grouped according to different kinds of love situation (first love, love at first sight, unrequited love, etc.). Authors used include Jane Austen
, Anthony Trollope
, Oscar Wilde
,...
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Catherine Hutton
Of particular value in CH
's letters are her comments on literature. She offered detailed views on (probably) Elizabeth Heyrick
's Exposition, a pamphlet about economics, admiring the language while doubting Heyrick's capacity to...
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Anne Stevenson
Despite the strong emotion expressed in some of these poems, AS
later remembered the volume as setting free her gift for irony.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press, 1998.
126
The final poem, A Legacy, On my Fiftieth Birthday, is written...
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Sophia Lee
The preface to this book, newly written for its publication, is SL
's major critical statement about the woman's literary tradition and her own place in it. She mentions the hostile reception of her own...
Textual Features
Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
The feelings of this Emma are all in extremes. During her early passion she quotes Frances Greville
on the pains of sensibility.
She and her father kneel alternately to each other when she...
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...
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G. B. Stern
Sheila Kaye-Smith
and GBS
jointly published Talking of Jane Austen, an attempt at an informal record of their endless conversations about a novelist they both loved.
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
87
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P. D. James
James felt that detective stories offer far more detailed and realistic portraits of the way life was lived in the period of their writing than do many novels: Because the detective story is usually set...
Textual Production
Monica Dickens
Her other introductions to literary works include one to a paperback edition of Austen
's Mansfield Park in 1972.
