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.
The title-page quotes and very slightly alters four lines from Pope
beginning What gay ideas crowd the vacant brain,
Gore, Catherine. Mothers and Daughters. Bentley, 1849.
title-page
but whereas Pope's imaginary Teresa Blount
was daydreaming idly and innocently of the dukes and...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Gore
The title-page quotes the passage in Swift
's Gulliver's Travels where the King of Brobdingnag hears from Gulliver about English politics and marvels that human grandeur can be mimicked by such contemptible insects.
qtd. in
Gore, Catherine. The Hamiltons; or, Official Life in 1830. R. Bentley, 1850.
title-page
The...
Intertextuality and Influence
Catherine Gore
Like its predecessor, this novel recalls Jane Austen
, but this time the plot (at least the earlier part) is closer to that of Sense and Sensibility. Marcia, a sensible elder sister, makes a...
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...
Textual Production
Catherine Gore
In The Cabinet MinisterCG
borrowed the foundations of a plot from Jane Austen
once more, in the story of an impoverished sister and brother, Bessy and Frank Grenfell, brought up out of reluctant charity...
Gore, Catherine. Cecil; or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb. R. Bentley, 1845.
title-page
As the Edinburgh Review noticed, Cecil's launching as a coxcomb takes place in 1809, the year that Byron began writing Childe Harold, and his final moral awakening...
Literary responses
Catherine Gore
The year after these two novels appeared, a writer in The New Spirit of the Age measured CG
unflatteringly against the humour of Frances Burney
or the lifelike precision of Jane Austen
, but credited...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Grant
She likes her reading to be strenuous: she recommends Jane Austen
's Mansfield Park as light reading,
Grant, Anne. Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan. Editor Grant, John Peter, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844, 3 vols.
Early in her conception of this project, Grant invoked the Spirit or the Muse of Biography: on what calm elevation dost thou reside, surrounded by the powers of just discrimination, candid discussion, and true delineation...
Author summary
Sarah Green
Besides a conduct book, a translation, and a pamphlet, SG
wrote most fictional forms available to her: novels in several modes, stories, romances, and most notably mock-romances. She was one of the ten most prolific...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Ham
The story opens with the young Englishwoman Rhoda Ford (the unbeautiful one of two sisters) and her family in the west of Ireland, where her father has an entrepreneurial scheme. They try to come...
Literary responses
Isabella Neil Harwood
This novel generated a large amount of attention and positive reviews. They all made some points in common: they loved the plot, the way Minnie/Minna's character developed, the originality and the sustained interest it provided...
Literary responses
Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
Jane Austen
called this novel very good and clever, but tedious.
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Reception
Mary Hays
One of Jane Austen
's sisters-in-law owned a copy. Some reviewers objected both to content and arrangement. The European Review was not untypical in that although it expressed some admiration it also called for a...
