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.
"Jane Austen" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Jane_Austen_coloured_version.jpg.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license. This work is in the public domain.
EW
's essay The Radiance of Jane Austen was reprinted in 2009 in Susannah Carson's A Truth Universally Acknowledged : 33 great writers on why we read Jane Austen.
Birth
Catherine Hubback
Her parents were married at St Laurence, Ramsgate, Kent, on 24 July 1806.
“FamilySearch Internet Genealogy Service”. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Her aunt Jane Austen
had lived with her parents for some months early in their marriage, and later wrote verses to celebrate...
Birth
Catharine Macaulay
Catharine Sawbridge (later CM
) was born at her father's estate of Olantigh, in the parish of Wye in Kent.
This is just across the River Stour from Godmersham Park, which was later...
Cultural formation
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
's parents came from the same class as Jane Austen
: people of the gentry whose menfolk did professional work, with family links to the nobility. Her comments on the middling classes
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers, 1870.
2: 160
death
Charlotte Yonge
She was buried at the foot of John Keble
's memorial cross in Otterbourne churchyard (despite a suggestion that she should be buried beside Jane Austen
in Winchester Cathedral).
Nadel, Ira Bruce, and William E. Fredeman, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 18. Gale Research, 1983.
18: 322
Dedications
Catherine Hubback
CH
had heard the Austen fragment read aloud in her youth, but did not have access to it as she wrote, which she did on a long visit to Wales. She dedicated her work...
Dedications
Emma Tennant
ET
moved into the field of Austen
iana with Pemberley, A Sequel to Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen
, dedicated to her mother
.
Tennant, Emma. Pemberley. St Martin’s Press, 1993.
prelims
Education
Mary Lavin
ML
took her MA from University College, Dublin, with a thesis on Jane Austen
for which she received first class honours.
Peterson, Richard F. Mary Lavin. Twayne, 1978.
20
Education
Frances Arabella Rowden
FAR
was taught until she was about eighteen by her schoolmistress aunt Arabella
. In 1792 she was enrolled as a boarder at the Abbey School
in Reading, where Jane Austen
had spent a...
Education
J. K. Rowling
Formative early reading included Richard Scarry
and Kenneth Grahame
's The Wind in the Willows. Joanne Rowling did not care for Enid Blyton
as a young child but acquired a taste for her later...
Education
Elizabeth Taylor
Her first school, where she went at the age of six, was a little private establishment called Leopold House, which gave a grounding in English and maths and team games.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books, 2009.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Education
H. D.
HD's father encouraged her education, although he refused to allow her to attend art school. Instead, she was encouraged to study mathematics and was tutored by her brother Eric
. Eric also provided his sister...
Education
Edna Lyall
Since the cousin with whom she shared lessons was three years older, Ada Ellen read a good many books at that time which must have been far beyond . . . [her] powers. At twelve...
Education
Harriet Shaw Weaver
HSW
's family encouraged her in the regular pursuits of a young, middle-class Victorian woman. From her father she inherited an enthusiasm for poetry—she especially liked Shakespeare
, Coleridge
, and Whitman
—and she read...
Education
Bernice Rubens
At university, she was President of both the student Music and Socialist societies, as well as a member of the Students' Union Council.
Gilbert, Sarah. “Bernice Rubens”. Cardiff University Magazine, Vol.
1
, No. 1.
BR
later found that her education slowed her development as a writer...
Timeline
Early August 1591
Sir John Harington
's translation of Ariosto
's heroicromanceOrlando Furioso (which means something like Roland Run Mad) was published.
17 August 1759
In the Seven Years' War, the British navy won a crucial victory over the French fleet at the battle of Lagos, WestAfrica.
1765
The didactic History of Little Goody Two-Shoes was published by John Newbery: the most popular children's book of its period. It had fourteen reprints before 1814.
About 1766
Printer and engraver John Spilsbury
perfected the dissected map which became the forerunner of the jigsaw puzzle.
By June 1766
James Fordyce
anonymously printed his Sermons to Young Women. It went through ninety-five British reprints by 1850, plus half as many again in the USA.
The Marseillaise was composed in France as a revolutionary song.
By August 1794
The Necromancer, or The Tale of the Black Forest, translated by Peter Teuthold
from the German of Karl Friedrich Kahlert
, appeared: it was one of the gothichorrid novels of Austen
's Northanger Abbey.
1796-1815
Throughout these war years the Bibliothèque britannique, published in Geneva, kept open cultural relations between France and England.
23 July 1796
Horrid Mysteries. A Story, translated by P. Will
from Karl Friedrich August Grosse
(one of the gothichorrid novels of Austen
's Northanger Abbey), was advertised as just out.
26 April 1798
Francis Lathom
's The Midnight Bell, A German Story, one of the gothichorrid novels mentioned in Jane Austen
's Northanger Abbey, was advertised as newly published.
25 June 1798
A new tax on the upper classes came into effect, levying two guineas for the privilege of running a coach or carriage with armorial bearings (that is, a coat of arms) painted on it.
10 May to 14 August 1813
The British Institution
held a retrospective exhibition of 141 paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds
at its Pall Mall Picture Galleries: a major event of the social season, both cultural and patriotic.
Barchas, Janine. What Jane Saw. http://www.whatjanesaw.org, http://www.whatjanesaw.org.
The Literary Gazette printed a Key to Marianne Spencer Hudson
's silver-fork novel, Almack's (titled after the well-known elite gentlemen's club of the same name), which had already reached its second edition this year. The...
