Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Jane Austen
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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.
Her narratives detail the life events, character, appearance, and publication histories of the various authors. Frequently, as in the case of Austen
, she devotes more time to sketching a physical and mental character than...
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
The series has a general introduction, On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing, and a Preface, Biographical and Critical for each novelist, which in its echo of the full and original title of Johnson's...
Textual Features
Margaret Drabble
Speaking at a Jane Austen
conference in 1993, MD
said that in this book she was doing something entirely new for her, in moving into, or close to, the occult.
Textual Features
Regina Maria Roche
Jane Austen
's Emma (in which this novel is mentioned) seems to have picked up some trifles from its plot. Roche's Marlowe hides his love for the impoverished Fanny because of his dependence on his...
Textual Features
Margaret Oliphant
Elisabeth Jay points out that the title might suggest a bildungsroman with a female protagonist, like Emma by Austen
, whose fine vein of feminine cynicism
Jay, Elisabeth. Mrs Oliphant: "A Fiction to Herself": A Literary Life. Clarendon Press.
60
Oliphant admired.
Jay, Elisabeth. Mrs Oliphant: "A Fiction to Herself": A Literary Life. Clarendon Press.
66
But Hester, unlike Emma, is...
Textual Features
Viola Meynell
Through satire, gender issues emerge for the first time in Meynell's work: women are portrayed as fatuous, wanting nothing more than to please men; men, in their turn, are dull and ineffectual.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
Though Theresa writes most of the letters in the book, the opening one, as often in women's epistolary novels at this date, is an exchange between men. Tomlins, however, does not attempt to capture a...
Textual Features
Sara Jeannette Duncan
The Imperialist features a double-stranded plot focusing on a Canadian brother and sister. Lorne Murchison pursues a connection with Britain through formal trade agreements while Advena Murchison unites the countries with bonds of affection when...
Spark's introduction speculates about the neglect of Mary Shelley, suggests as possible cause the fact that no single, facile cliché can encapsulate her, and puts forward a witty and trenchant list of the clichés to...
Textual Features
Q. D. Leavis
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
Lady Louisa Stuart
LLS
's letters to Scott
show her to have been a trusted and perceptive critic of his novels, which she often read before publication. On The Heart of Mid-Lothian she sent him a major critique...
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Catherine Hubback
The younger sister is Emma Watson, who has been educated away from home, and who on returning to her impoverished family finds herself out of sympathy with her elder sisters' quest to attract husbands. As...
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Henrietta Rouviere Mosse
In The Wayward (Weird) Sister the same character is writing a journal which owes its origin to Samuel Richardson
, that is to Miss Byron, the indefatigable Miss Byron, and Clementina. Oh, but I shall...
Textual Features
Catherine Gore
The title of this novel, published in 1836, echoes and responds to Anna Brownell Jameson
's Diary of an Ennuyée, 1826. The hero, Byronic Lord Eustace Hartston, keeps the heroine, Lady Harriet Delaval, some...