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.
Photograph of a colourized print of Jane Austen, from a drawing by a Mr Andrews commissioned by Austen's nephew James Edward Austen Leigh as frontispiece to his "Memoir of Jane Austen", 1870 (fifty years after she died). She is shown seated, with a book on her lap, wearing a blue dress and light brown bonnet.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
Residence Mary Anne Barker
MAB and her husband, Frederick Broome , called their cottage at the sheep station, from their own name, Broomielaw. It stood in the Malvern Hills on the banks of the Selwyn River, attached...
Textual Production Patricia Beer
PB 's Reader, I Married Him: A Study of the Women Characters of Jane Austen , Charlotte Brontë , Elizabeth Gaskell , and George Eliot was a harbinger of serious critical interest in the women's literary tradition.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Sherry, Vincent B., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 40. Gale Research.
25
Intertextuality and Influence Patricia Beer
This collection shows a deliberate inclination towards subjects whose strangeness startles the reader with an unexpected perspective. The title of the book is a phrase applied to the audience in Concert at Long Melford Church...
Textual Features Patricia Beer
PB here considers a series of canonical authors, Austen , Eliot , Charlotte Brontë , and Elizabeth Gaskell , and the way that the Woman Question was handled in fiction. Critic John Mullan notes her...
Intertextuality and Influence Stella Benson
For a period of time after Goodbye, Stranger, SB did very little writing but a great deal of reading, including the novels of Jane Austen . She said she felt extremely middle-aged
Bedell, R. Meredith. Stella Benson. Twayne.
11
at...
Textual Features Elizabeth Bonhote
A third-person narrative relates how Ellen, gentle as the dove, harmless as the lamb, and modest, without being reserved,
Bonhote, Elizabeth. Ellen Woodley. William Lane.
1: 7
and her exemplary rural clergyman father succeed in redeeming and reforming the unprepossessing Edwin...
Textual Features Dorothy Boulger
The plot follows in the tradition of Austen 's Pride and Prejudice: chance causes the heroine and future hero to dislike one another on sight, after which she has to learn to overcome her...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Bowen
She writes admiringly of Jane Austen , but far less so of George Eliot , whom she regards as over-intellectual.
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
81-2
Literary responses Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Henry James 's review in 1865 considered Braddon's success alongside that of Collins , pronouncing her the founder of the sensation novel (defined as devising domestic mysteries adapted to the wants of a sternly prosaic...
Literary responses Anne Brontë
Like the first, this second reviewer (probably H. F. Chorley ) found Agnes Grey both less objectionable and less powerful than Wuthering Heights.
Allott, Miriam, editor. The Brontës. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
217-9
Many reviews concentrated wholly or solely on Emily's novel. The...
Textual Production Charlotte Brontë
CB 's comments on Jane Austen , whom she first read at this time, reflect her own literary priorities: She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously...
Reception Charlotte Brontë
Jane Eyre has been filmed repeatedly for both television and the cinema, as well as being made the subject of musicals, plays, and a ballet performed by the London Children's Ballet in 1997 and 2008...
Intertextuality and Influence Frances Brooke
She thought it had been too long, with too little plot, and that the subscription method had not been to its benefit. Critic Juliet McMaster believes that Jane Austen had Emily Montague in mind in...
Intertextuality and Influence Christine Brooke-Rose
This sets out to explore the effects of various technological media on the novel genre. It begins with the apparent forcible entry into a story by Jane Austen of a great German contemporary of Austen:...

Timeline

By Christmas 1869: Francis Galton, mathematician, scientist,...

Writing climate item

By Christmas 1869

Francis Galton , mathematician, scientist, and eugenicist, published Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences,

1872: US writer Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncy,...

Writing climate item

1872

US writer Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncy, or Chauncey, Woolsey) published her highly popular and influential story for girls entitled What Katy Did.
American National Biography. http://www.anb.org/articles/home.html.

February 1906: Publisher J. M. Dent launched Everyman's...

Writing climate item

February 1906

Publisher J. M. Dent launched Everyman's Library, aiming to reprint 1,000 classic titles: the first year's 155 volumes included Æschylus , Shakespeare , Jane Austen practically complete,
Clair, Colin. A Chronology of Printing. Cassell.
169
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .

1924: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth...

Women writers item

1924

Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press published The Rector's Daughter, a novel by F. M. (or Flora Macdonald) Mayor .

1937: Beatrice Kean Seymour wrote and published...

Women writers item

1937

Beatrice Kean Seymour wrote and published a biography entitiled Jane Austen , Study for a Portrait.

22 July 1949: The house in the village of Chawton in Hampshire...

Women writers item

22 July 1949

The house in the village of Chawton in Hampshire where Jane Austen lived with her mother and sister from 1809 until her death was opened to the public, having been bought for three thousand pounds...

17 November 1958: The sale began at Sotheby's of the collection...

Writing climate item

17 November 1958

The sale began at Sotheby's of the collection of first editions built up by the bibliographer Michael Sadleir , who had recently died.

23 April 1996: The annual BAFTA (British Academy of Film...

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23 April 1996

The annual BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television ) Awards were presented at the LondonPalladium in celebration of one hundred years of British film-making.

By late 1996: Helen Fielding hit the best-selling jackpot...

Women writers item

By late 1996

Helen Fielding hit the best-selling jackpot when her novelBridget Jones's Diary (originally a newspaper column begun the previous year) was published as a book.

: Oneword Radio, with offices in London, was...

Building item

By Summer2000

Oneword Radio , with offices in London, was set up to broadcast to readers: the bulk of its programming came from audiobooks read serially, sometimes though not always abridged.

By 11 May 2002: John Murray, publishers of Austen and Byron...

Writing climate item

By 11 May 2002

John Murray , publishers of Austen and Byron among many others, and one of the few independent publishers remaining after rapid change in the industry, sold out to bookselling chain W. H. Smith .

15 April 2003: Iranian academic Azar Nafisi published Reading...

Writing climate item

15 April 2003

Iranian academic Azar Nafisi published Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, a remarkable work of social and political commentary intertwined with and expressed through literary criticism.

July 2003: Chawton House in the village of Chawton in...

Women writers item

July 2003

Chawton House in the village of Chawton in Hampshire, once owned by Jane Austen 's brother Edward Austen Knight , opened its doors as Chawton House Library , a research centre in women's writing.

16 April 2007: Novelist Yann Martel began a project of sending...

Writing climate item

16 April 2007

Novelist Yann Martel began a project of sending a book every two weeks to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper together with an admonitory letter; on a website he recorded the books sent and gave the...

Texts

No bibliographical results available.