Jane Austen

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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.
Photograph of a colourized print of Jane Austen, from a drawing by a Mr Andrews commissioned by Austen's nephew James Edward Austen Leigh as frontispiece to his "Memoir of Jane Austen", 1870 (fifty years after she died). She is shown seated, with a book on her lap, wearing a blue dress and light brown bonnet.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Ann Radcliffe
AR 's rival M. G. Lewis finished reading Udolpho within ten days of its publication, though he had during the same time travelled from England to the Hague.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press, 1999.
93
In 1825 Ann Lister eagerly traced...
Literary responses Maria Jane Jewsbury
The warmest appreciation of MJJ 's Austen criticism came from George Henry Lewes in July 1859. He also, however, attributed the piece to Whately when he quoted extensively from it in an essay on Austen
Literary responses Hannah More
Next year saw a rich crop of reviews. Sydney Smith in the Edinburgh Review, while praising HM 's style and her skill at manipulating her readers, damned the novel as over-moralized, strained and unnatural...
Literary responses Catherine Hubback
Geraldine Jewsbury 's review praised the novel as among the best of a good crop that year, noting: The story is as quiet as one of Miss Austen 's, but the characters and incidents are...
Literary responses Elizabeth Gaskell
Critic Jenny Uglow argues that My Lady Ludlow is an important—an original and brave
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
468
book—although its experiment in creating a feminine fiction based on women's lives, carefully observed, is not entirely successful. In terms...
Literary responses Constance Smedley
This work was reviewed by Mary Webb for the Bookman in January 1925 together with Ethel Sidgwick 's Laura: A Cautionary Story and V. H. Friedlaender 's The Colour of Youth.
Crawford, Mary, and Bruce Crawford. “Selected Bibliography of Writings By and About Mary Webb”. Mary Webb, Neglected Genius, 2010.
According to Smedley...
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
During her lifetime CY was ranked as a serious novelist with Austen , Trollope , Balzac , and Zola . Contemporaries like Louisa Alcott , Margaret Oliphant , Ellen Wood , and Rhoda Broughton made...
Literary responses Alice Meynell
Virginia Woolf was angered by AM 's opinion that Jane Austen was a frump (and was even angrier that Meynell advised reading Sterne 's Tristram Shandy in an expurgated edition).
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
2: 503
Literary responses Elizabeth Gaskell
Reviews were extremely positive. Most expressed a sense of loss to English letters at EG 's recent death, and compared Wives and Daughters to her other well-loved book, Cranford. The Athenæum likened the style...
Literary responses E. M. Hull
Patricia Raub views The Sheik as the precursor of the mass-marketed romances initiated by Harlequin Romance novels in 1957.
Raub, Patricia. “Issues of Passion and Power in E. M. Hulls The SheikWomens Studies, Vol.
21
, 1992, pp. 119-28.
123
The plot line which pits a young, beautiful, inexperienced, and aristocratic heroine against a tall...
Literary responses Anita Brookner
Critic John Bayley found AB on top of her form in this novel, spinning a plot line as strong as any of Jane Austen 's.
“Pages of pleasure”. Guardian Weekly, 1–7 Jan. 2004, pp. 12-13.
12
Literary responses Frances Jacson
The Critical Review did this novel proud, first listing it, then praising it warmly for its superior moral tendency.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
4th ser. 1 (1812): 668
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
4th ser. 6 (1814): 688
Sarah, Lady Davy , told Sarah Ponsonby
Literary responses Eliza Lynn Linton
Geraldine Jewsbury , reviewing this novel for the Athenæum, was none too complimentary. She thought the author had offered an ineffective sermon on this excellent moral: clever, as anything she writes is likely to...
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, 1988, pp. 185-07.
192
to that of Jane Austen (despite the fundamental earnestness of Taylor's Dissenting attitudes). Presenting those attitudes as a crucial...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
BP 's father wrote to her on 3 May 1950 commending this novel, which he had not expected to enjoy since he preferred mysteries.
Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. Barbara Pym: A Critical Biography. University of Missouri Press, 1992.
157n12
Robert Liddell , who had been familiar with it throughout...

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