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.
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
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
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...
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
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...
Literary responses
Christina Rossetti
Gabriel
anticipated critics when he described Commonplace as a prose tale . . . rather in the Austen
vein.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Editors Doughty, Oswald and John Robert Wahl, Clarendon Press, 1965–1967, 4 vols.
2: 818
Contrasting Commonplace, and Other Short Stories with tawdry romance,
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2223 (1870): 734
the...
Literary responses
Rosa Nouchette Carey
The Athenæum was lavish with faint praise. It likened Only the Governess to a tranquil backwater out of the main current of the turbid stream of modern fiction.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
3151 (1888): 337
Praising Carey for not...
Literary responses
Barbara Pym
The sales of this second novel nearly doubled those of Pym's first: Excellent Women sold 5,477 copies in the two months to June 1952, while Some Tame Gazelle sold only 3,722 in the thirteen years...
Literary responses
Amy Levy
The Jewish press was outraged by what it saw as the antisemitism of this novel. The Jewish Chronicle did not review it, but implied strong disapprobation in an article entitled Critical Jews. The Jewish...
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
Frances Trollope
FT
's rambunctious widow was greatly admired by both her male and female readership. Even the Athenæum, which was usually unsupportive of her work, offered a positive review: [s]o frequently has it been our...
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
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
Eleanor Sleath
The Critical Review observed crushingly that vapid and servile imitations like this one were a severe penance for critics who had been seduced by Ann Radcliffe
into admiration for the modern romance.
qtd. in
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
