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.
Of about a dozen other books in the series, this work was the only one written by a woman about a woman writer. Royds situates Barrett Browning within a strong tradition of women writers including...
Maria Edgeworth
read this novel on its appearance (firmly preferring it to Jane Austen's Emma), and two years later mentioned it as the title defining FJ
's achievement.
This book is sometimes called a memoir, but its autobiographical moments are only incidental. MJ
's attention is mostly directed towards books and reading; her own experiences of writing, publishing, and having her works performed...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Muriel Jaeger
In an amusing fantasy entitled Trial of Jane Austen the accused stands charged with masquerading as a great writer.
Jaeger, Muriel. Shepherd’s Trade. Arthur H. Stockwell.
118
Pompous or foolish witnesses accuse her of ignoring national politics, social problems, sex, professional careerism...
Intertextuality and Influence
P. D. James
PDJ
followed the English tradition of detective-story writing that has continued from the 1920s and 1930s, a genre in which many women have held dominant positions. She spoke of her adolescent reading as influenced in...
Intertextuality and Influence
P. D. James
As the work opens, Cordelia, slight of body, determined of will, savvy of mind
Gidez, Richard. P. D. James. Twayne.
56
(who is to reappear later in another book, The Skull Beneath the Skin), is running a seedy detective agency...
Intertextuality and Influence
P. D. James
Commander Adam Dalgliesh does his detecting this time in the claustrophobic confines of a theological college, in one of [James's] favourite places—the isolated, beautiful, but desolate Suffolk coast.
Ashby, Melanie. “P. D. James Talks to Melanie Ashby”. Mslexia, Vol.
14
, pp. 39-40.
39
Despite the old-fashioned setting, the plot...
Textual Production
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
P. D. James
PDJ
published a historical detective novel she said she wrote for fun and in order to combine two great enthusiasms (detection and Jane Austen
): Death Comes to Pemberley, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice.
Crown, Sarah. “A life in writing: PD James”. Guardian.co.uk.
Textual Production
P. D. James
PDJ
gave the annual lecture to the Jane Austen Society
at Chawton House in Hampshire (where Austen
was a regular visitor); it was entitled Emma Considered as a Detective Story.
James, P. D. Time to Be in Earnest. Faber and Faber.
224, 250
Family and Intimate relationships
P. D. James
PDJ
named Jane after her favourite author, Jane Austen
. She was reading Austen in a London bomb shelter not long before her daughter was born, and bombs fell incessantly around Queen Charlotte's Hospital
after...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Jenkins
EJ
published a critical biography of another author of the past, Jane Austen
, for some of whose works she also wrote introductions.
