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
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
, Dec. 1985, pp. 129-44.
Johnston classifies reviewers...
Reception Vita Sackville-West
The enthusiastic review by J. C. Squire was not entirely welcome to VSW , since she regarded Squire as a silly old ass and all that.
qtd. in
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin, 1984.
167
She feared being relegated to the category of...
Reception E. H. Young
An international conference, The Life and Work of Emily Hilda Young, was held in Bristol, organised by Stella Dean and Austen scholar Maggie Lane .
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.
324
Reception Mary Russell Mitford
Our Village made MRM a literary lion. She became a celebrity, and was entertained by dukes as the toast of the town.
Pigrome, Stella. “Mary Russell Mitford”. The Charles Lamb Bulletin, Vol.
66
, Charles Lamb Society, Apr. 1989, pp. 53-62.
58
Her tiny house and garden were swamped with trippers and celebrity-hunters. In...
Reception Eliza Nugent Bromley
The Critical Review treated this novel with a fair degree of respect as told with elegance . . . frequently interesting.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
234
It has been generally, however, regarded as the leading model for Love and...
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, 1997.
17-18
A long review in the Analytical Review, probably...
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 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 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, 2006.
204, 351
Residence Mary Anne Barker
MAB and her husband, Frederick Broome , called their cottage at the sheep station, from their own name, Broomielaw. It stood in the Malvern Hills on the banks of the Selwyn River, attached...
Residence Gillian Slovo
Her grandmother and elder sister travelled separately; her father, already in England, had been waiting on tenterhooks for their arrival. GS saw England through the old-world lens of Charles Dickens and Jane Austen;
Slovo, Gillian. Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country. Little, Brown, 1997.
103
she...
Residence E. M. Delafield
Virginia Woolf did, however, visit EMD , and wrote to her niece in November 1935 that Delafield lives in an old house like a character in Jane Austen ; whom she adores. But she has...
Residence Anne Mozley
The garden, though not the house, was liable to flooding by the River Trent. John Wordsworth observed that the conversation at Barrow was as good as anything in Miss Austen 's novels.
Wordsworth, John, Bishop of Salisbury, and Anne Mozley. “Memoir”. Essays from "Blackwood", edited by F. Mozley and F. Mozley, William Blackwood and Sons, 1892, p. xii - xx.
xviii
Elizabeth...
Residence Mary Russell Mitford
The first period of poverty after his marriage caused him to move his family from Alresford in Hampshire. (MRM later remembered the Hampshire countryside with warm affection, and delighted in its nearness to...
Textual Features George Eliot
Ashton discerns here the influence of Jane Austen , but she deals with a wider social range and, unlike her predecessor, hints at dialect in the speech of her rustic characters.
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
176
But perhaps the...

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