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 Jane West
This work had the unusual distinction of earning approving comments from both Austen and Wollstonecraft . The contrasted sisters are generally seen as an important source for Austen 's Sense and Sensibility, and the...
Literary responses Charlotte Smith
CS 's biographer Loraine Fletcher feels that in her Catherine the young Jane Austen uses Ethelindeas a touchstone of literary intelligence for her characters.
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan, 1998.
121
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. Editors Todd, Janet and Marilyn Butler, Pickering, 1989, 7 vols.
7: 188
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan, 1998.
120-1
Literary responses Eliza Nugent Bromley
Peterson has pointed out that this novel is probably as much a target in Austen 's Love and Freindship as is its predecessor. It received, however, very different reviews (the Analytical's probably written by...
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, Sept. 2001, pp. 303-31.
315
EHY received a number of letters begging for this story (in itself a sequel) to...
Literary responses Elizabeth Jenkins
The novel was criticised by some for its exclusively upper-middle-class reach—a view which was energetically countered by Rose Macaulay on a radio programme.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
107
The Times Literary Supplement welcomed with joy a novel where the...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
This novel made the best-seller list the month after publication; but at the end of the year it received the Bookseller's Glass Slipper award for books whose sales had not reflected their quality. Reviewers...
Literary responses Emma Marshall
One of EM 's clerical admirers called this book a particularly strong instance of the way her heroines (if not quite up to Jane Austen 's Anne Elliot or Charlotte Yonge 's Violet in Heartsease...
Literary responses Georgiana Fullerton
Henry Fothergill Chorley , reviewing the novel for the Athenæum, found Grantley Manorhaunted by the intertextual spectre of Jane Austen 's Emma; he also drew parallels with Frances Burney 's Cecilia...
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.
Literary responses Anne Brontë
Like the first, this second reviewer (probably H. F. Chorley ) found Agnes Grey both less objectionable and less powerful than Wuthering Heights.
Allott, Miriam, editor. The Brontës. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974.
217-9
Many reviews concentrated wholly or solely on Emily's novel. The...
Literary responses Anne Plumptre
Kotzebue was then all the rage. The Critical Review discussed AP 's The Natural Son in December 1798, explaining the changes made in her version for stage presentation, and considering her biography of Kotzebue. But...
Literary responses Sarah Harriet Burney
Charles Burney , too, slighted his youngest daughter's work in comparison with the elder's.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. “Editor’s Introduction”. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, edited by Lorna J. Clark, Georgia University Press, 1997.
lxii
Jane Austen later noted that Clarentine seemed good on the first reading, not so good on the second, and unnatural...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
Elizabeth Bowen , in her laudatory review, likened the icy sharpness of ICB 's dialogue to the sound of glass being swept up one of these London mornings after a blitz.
qtd. in
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
160
ICB received a...
Literary responses Diana Athill
Through her great age and greater panache DA became something of a cult figure. Edward Field wrote that she functioned for the British public as the Chief Guide to Old Age.
Field, Edward. “Edward Field’s Introduction”. Letters to a Friend, 2012, p. xi - xx.
xx
She was awarded...
Literary responses Harriett Mozley
HM 's brother John Henry (later famous as Cardinal Newman) said her first book had the fault of being too brilliant.
qtd. in
Tillotson, Kathleen et al. “Harriett Mozley”. Mid-Victorian Studies, Athlone Press, 1965, pp. 38-48.
38-9
It was read everywhere by both High and Low Church parties. Several...

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