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.
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
These provided the pattern for Thomas Moore
's very fashionable Irish Melodies.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
62
Either Moore's or possibly Morgan's are provided by Frank Churchill for Jane Fairfax along with the famous piano in Austen
's Mansfield Park.
Literary responses
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Meanwhile the vogue for The Wild Irish Girl was immense: Dublin ladies were wearing scarlet cloaks and golden bodkins, as Glorvina and as Owenson did.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
71-2
She became (and remained more or less all her...
Literary responses
Henrietta Sykes
Jane Austen
joked in a letter about taking this novel as fact. We are just going to set off for Northumberland to be shut up in Widdrington Tower, where there must be two or three...
Literary responses
Jane Taylor
Critic Stuart Curran
calls this volume brilliant. He notes the resemblance of its fine irony
Curran, Stuart. “The I Altered”. Romanticism and Feminism, edited by Anne K. Mellor, Indiana University Press, pp. 185-07.
192
to that of Jane Austen
(despite the fundamental earnestness of Taylor's Dissenting attitudes). Presenting those attitudes as a crucial...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Taylor
Tomkins (whose words open the novel in very much the way that Sterne
's narrator opens A Sentimental Journey) is in search of a wife, but early rules out the heroine from consideration. She...
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.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Taylor
As a child Betty Coles (later ET
) wrote plays (with very short scenes each demanding a new and elaborate setting) and stories. She said she always wanted to be a novelist.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
2
At twelve...
Reception
Elizabeth Taylor
Although she received some glowing reviews throughout her career from some of the most distinguished of her novelistic peers, ET
has also been damned with faint praise. She has been called both the modern man's...
Dedications
Emma Tennant
ET
moved into the field of Austen
iana with Pemberley, A Sequel to Pride and PrejudiceJane Austen
, dedicated to her mother
.
At first a novelist (who later became a specialist in the...
Textual Production
Emma Tennant
In the same year she published Tess, which is based on and continues the story of Hardy
's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
She followed these the next year with a return to Austen
Publishing
Ann Thicknesse
AT
was a composer of music as well as a performer and writer. Jane Austen
transcribed her composition The Fandango into book two of the family music collection now at Jane Austen's House Museum.
Grover, Danielle. “’Partly Admired & Partly Laugh’d at at every tea table’: The Case of Ann Thicknesse (née Ford) and <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>The School for Fashion</span> (1800)”. Female Spectator, Vol.
12
, No. 3, pp. 5-8.
5
Literary responses
Angela Thirkell
The Times called this novel a suite instead of a symphony.
Strickland, Margot. Angela Thirkell: Portrait of a Lady Novelist. Duckworth.
127
Not for the first time AT
was likened to Austen
, but this time the likeness was held to lie in not mentioning...