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.
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, pp. 303-31.
324
Publishing
E. H. Young
This was the first novel she wrote after moving from Bristol to London. It went on to a further change of title in the United States, where it appeared in 1927 as The...
Literary responses
E. H. Young
V. S. Pritchett
was moved by The Curate's Wife to liken EHY
(as did many critics) to Austen
.
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, pp. 303-31.
315
EHY
received a number of letters begging for this story (in itself a sequel) to...
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.
18: 322
Textual Features
Charlotte Yonge
The paired heroines, Emily and Lilias Mohun, have been traced to Austen
's Sense and Sensibility (though Yonge's pair are only two among a large family).
Hayter, Alethea. Charlotte Yonge. Northcote House.
5
Hayter inadvertently gives Emily's name as Elinor.
Hayter, Alethea. Charlotte Yonge. Northcote House.
5
Literary responses
Charlotte Yonge
The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen
's nephew James Austen-Leigh
compared it to the work of Austen and Scott
...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Yonge
If, as June Sturrock
writes, The Clever Woman of the Family is CY
's Emma, then Rachel's aspirations (which are civic-minded where those of Austen
's Emma are individual and self-serving) are far more sweepingly put down.
Sturrock, June. "Heaven and Home": Charlotte M. Yonge’s Domestic Fiction and the Debate over Women. University of Victoria.
The book's contents consisted largely of already published journalism, carefully revised for the collection.
McNeillie, Andrew, and Virginia Woolf. “Introduction”. The Common Reader, Annotated Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. ix - xv.
x
Woolf had put detailed consideration into the idea of making a structure for the book, but she ended by rejecting...
Textual Features
Virginia Woolf
She writes more directly of money, of the riches lavished through the ages on masculine institutions like the ancient universities, but here too her clinching example is one of the imagination: her contrast of the...
Reception
Mary Wollstonecraft
Katharine Marion Metcalfe
, a recent graduate at Oxford University
, did something extraordinary in enquiring of Professor Sir Walter Raleigh
whether materials existed for research on MW
. Raleigh proposed that Metcalfe should edit Jane Austen
instead.
Barchas, Janine. “The Lost Books of Austen Studies”. States of the Book. CSECS/SCEDHS annual conference.
Publishing
Ethel Wilson
The book was produced in England but copies shipped to Canada bore a Canadian imprint.
Stouck, David. Ethel Wilson: A Critical Biography. University of Toronto Press.
110
Publication was delayed for some time. Upon first receiving the manuscript in early 1945, EW
's editors at Macmillan
Literary responses
Ethel Wilson
Negative reviews seemed to repeat Macmillan
's original worry that the collection was half-cooked. Aunt Topaz was characterized by the Canadian Forum as a terrible bore, whom the reviewer found almost as tiresome to...
Travel
Harriette Wilson
HW
's presence with her first lover, Lord Craven, at his family's estate of Ashdown Park in the Berkshire Downs was recorded in a letter by Jane Austen
, who wrote that Craven had...
Literary responses
Harriette Wilson
Admiration of HW
as a writer united historian Eric Hobsbawm
and editor Karl Miller
. Miller judged the memoirs a well-written serious work, as much a work of social history, a study of class and...
Timeline
Early August 1591: Sir John Harington's translation of Ariosto's...
Writing climate item
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...
National or international item
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...
Writing climate item
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...
Building item
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...
Building item
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.
About 27 March 1782: Eliza Hancock, aged nineteen, married Jean-François...
April 1792: The Marseillaise was composed in France as...
National or international item
April 1792
The Marseillaise was composed in France as a revolutionary song.
By August 1794: The Necromancer, or The Tale of the Black...
Writing climate item
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...
Writing climate item
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...
Writing climate item
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...
Writing climate item
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...
National or international item
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...
Building item
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.
9 June 1819: The library of the late Queen Charlotte was...
9 December 1826: The Literary Gazette printed a Key to Marianne...
Women writers item
9 December 1826
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...
