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.
GH
's next Regency romance, Bath Tangle (set in a place whose very name evokes Jane Austen
), features another heroine who needs special permission to marry.
Hodge, Jane Aiken. The Private World of Georgette Heyer. Bodley Head, 1984.
116, 209
Literary responses
Georgette Heyer
Critics have felt that GH
's Regency novels mutated gradually from romance to comedy of manners. Of course no clear line can be drawn between the two. Some reviewers compared Heyer with Jane Austen
because...
Literary responses
Georgette Heyer
Laski
argued that the taste for popular fiction stemmed from the fact that the serious modern novel had decided to deny itself the amenity of the shapely story satisfactorily resolved, so that compulsive novel readers...
Literary responses
Georgette Heyer
Joanna Cannan
(a friend of GH
) based a character on her in No Walls of Jasper (1930) who is described in Heyeresque style. She is not beautiful, not pretty; her nose was too large...
Leisure and Society
Elizabeth Heyrick
In the year 1827 EH
's reading included all of Jane Austen
's completed novels and Mary Russell Mitford
's Our Village.
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers, 1895.
179
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
John Oliver Hobbes
JOH
sometimes discusses her own writing, career, and ambition: One's place in literature is a possession—never a concession. And one knows one's place. I don't wish to be judged—one way or the other—till I am...
Intertextuality and Influence
John Oliver Hobbes
JOH
's speeches and interviews regularly deal with literature. In an interview with William Archer
, she admits to admiring Arthur Wing Pinero
's characterisation of women, while noting how little individualised are some of...
Intertextuality and Influence
Frances Sarah Hoey
Miriam finds local gossip that Florence is attempting to entrap her father ludicrous, and describes it as a comic parallel to Vanity Fair, with Florence not as Becky Sharp but as Amelia having to...
Textual Production
Barbara Hofland
The learnedness of allusion and the Austen
-like style of satiric storytelling are both unlike BH
's usual manner. It was not her usual practice, either, to publish anonymously, without mention of other works.
Literary responses
Barbara Hofland
Mary Russell Mitford
wrote to BH
, You are the mistress of our tears, as Miss Austen
is of our smiles, and I think you have the advantage.
qtd. in
Butts, Dennis. Mistress of our Tears, A Literary and Bibliographical Study of Barbara Hofland. Scolar Press, 1992.
19
Apart from somewhat overvaluing Hofland, this...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Jane Howard
They had been living together for more than a year, and EJH
had already embarked on the difficult stepmother relationship with the three Amis children—especially the two boys, who were living with them, and were...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Before beginning this novel she asked the advice of her stepson Martin Amis
to help her choose between this and a present-day version of Austen
's Sense and Sensibility. He opted unhesitatingly for the...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Jane Howard
Passages in The Lover's Companion are grouped according to different kinds of love situation (first love, love at first sight, unrequited love, etc.). Authors used include Jane Austen
, Anthony Trollope
, Oscar Wilde
,...
Textual Production
Catherine Hubback
CH
published her first book, a novel entitled The Younger Sister, which recapitulates and completes her aunt Jane Austen
's unfinished, unpublished early novel The Watsons.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Author summary
Catherine Hubback
CH
, a niece of Jane Austen
, began her publishing career in the mid nineteenth century with her completed version of a novel left unfinished by her famous aunt, of whom she also wrote...
