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.
JOH
sometimes discusses her own writing, career, and ambition: One's place in literature is a possession—never a concession. And one knows one's place. I don't wish to be judged—one way or the other—till I am...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Maria Callcott
After her first return from Italy and again later in her life, Maria Graham (later MC
) did book reviews for the publisher John Murray
. She expressed her admiration for contemporary literature: Coleridge
,...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eva Figes
In her introductions to Edgeworth, EF
notes Edgeworth's high opinion of Austen and Inchbald as novelists,
Figes, Eva, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. Belinda, Pandora, 1986, p. vii - xi.
viii
, argues that unlike Austen
's her young men need to grow up as much as her...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Fay Weldon
Fiction-writer Aunt Fay writes letters to her eighteen-year-old niece, Alice, a student of literature at college, in defence of Austen
's novels, which Alice finds boring and irrelevant. The letters give precise descriptions of social...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anne Grant
She likes her reading to be strenuous: she recommends Jane Austen
's Mansfield Park as light reading,
Grant, Anne. Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs. Grant of Laggan. Editor Grant, John Peter, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1844, 3 vols.
Though she mentions such writers as Eliza Haywood
and Mary Davys
, she begins her detailed discussion with the 1790s (a time which twenty years on would be regarded as somewhat late in the history...
She omits reviews from this collection, but provides readers with an opportunity to consider literary topics. The Translation of Poetry argues that because [i]n poetry the form of the thought is part of the thought...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Brigid Brophy
Some items are reprinted from Don't Never Forget, including a piece on Jane Austen
, fiercely condemnatory of her cult following (which BB
finds demeaning and condescending), which concludes with unreserved praise: I think...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Margaret Kennedy
Here Kennedy argues that entertainment and enjoyment are valuable aims for the novel. She maintains that the novelist is, in essence, a storyteller, but the storyteller-novelist has been excluded by a literary society that devalues...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Catherine Hutton
CH
was reading Jane Austen
: at this stage she saw Austen's novels as trifles, but agreeable ones.
Hutton, Catherine. Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century. Editor Beale, Catherine Hutton, Cornish Brothers, 1891.
175
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Muriel Jaeger
In an amusing fantasy entitled Trial of Jane Austen the accused stands charged with masquerading as a great writer.
Jaeger, Muriel. Shepherd’s Trade. Arthur H. Stockwell, 1965.
118
Pompous or foolish witnesses accuse her of ignoring national politics, social problems, sex, professional careerism...
SF
's letters deal mainly with day-to-day occurrences, but her literary opinons are always worth having. She comments on several works by Lady Charlotte Campbell (later Bury)
. Reading Austen
's Emma in 1816 (the...
