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.
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...
Reception
Anita Brookner
This book provoked an unusual article from journalist Mark Lawson
, centred less on Brookner than on his own response. I have mocked her dessicated sentences, characterless protagonists and action-free narratives, he wrote. The gist...
Reception
Jennifer Johnston
Critic Imhof Rüdiger
attacked JJ
(then the author of seven published novels) in 1985, arguing that she urgently needed to find new themes, and that her work was being compromised through self-repetition.
Imhof, Rüdiger. “’A Little Bit of Ivory, Two Inches Wide’: The Small World of Jennifer Johnston’s Fiction”. Etudes Irlandaises, Vol.
10
, pp. 129-44.
Johnston classifies reviewers...
Reception
Flora Macdonald Mayor
The novel established FMM
's reputation for precise use of prose,
“The Times Digital Archive 1785-2007”. Thompson Gale: The Times Digital Archive.
60741 (4 October 1980): 8
received good reviews, and very nearly won the Polignac Prize.
Williams, Merryn. Six Women Novelists, Macmillan.
45
FMM
was judged sensitive yet detached, firm and...
Reception
Charlotte Smith
Jane Austen
transcribed a poem, Kalendar of Flora, from Minor Morals, perhaps in summer 1808 for her sister Cassandra.
Le Faye, Deirdre. A Chronology of Jane Austen and her Family. Cambridge University Press.
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
Reception
Jane West
JW
was well-known as a productive writer who nevertheless put out a great deal of domestic labour. Jane Austen
, marvelling at her sister's time management skills, remarked: how good Mrs. West cd [sic] have...
Reception
Lucy Cary
Patrick Cary
, the biographer's brother (himself a priest and poet), was said by the nineteenth-century editor to have made cuts in LC
's work based on his dislike of over-feminine material. But modern...
Reception
Catherine Crowe
CC
's works were quickly made available in cheap editions, fit for the perusal of all classes.
Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland.
Partly by this means, she managed to attract many readers during the span of her career. Early critic...
Reception
Margaret Kennedy
Reviewers have likened Kennedy to Jane Austen
, one of her literary role models. In a review for the New York World, Beverley Nichols
stated that she would be a robust Jane Austen,...
Reception
Susanna Centlivre
SC
hinted in A Woman's Case that her husband was upset at her threatening his livelihood with the political rashness of her dedication. The man-in-skirts role became a favourite of David Garrick
, which kept...
Reception
Sheila Kaye-Smith
Where her first two novels had been well reviewed, this one received not a single notice for three weeks (probably on account of its late-autumn publication date). SKS
feared she was being passed over or...
One reviewer of this novel took the hint offered by CH
's frequent reference to her aunt, and pronounced that she was allied to Jane Austen
by genius as well as by blood.
Sutherland, Kathryn. Jane Austen’s Textual Lives from Aeschylus to Bollywood. Oxford University Press.
270
Reception
Frances Burney
Burney's family were delighted. Her young half-sister Sarah Harriet
(who was about to publish her own first novel) sent her a perfect rhapsody of praise.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press.
17-18
A long review in the Analytical Review, probably...