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.
CC
must have submitted the manuscript of her novel to the publisher Cawthorn
well before October 1798, when she confided to her young cousin Jane Austen
her annoyance over Cawthorn
's delays. At this date...
Intertextuality and Influence
Cassandra Cooke
The Critical Review offered a plot-summary of Battleridge and said that the grasp of seventeenth-century manners was good, but the work is not very amusing; and, in point of composition, it is despicable.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 778
Family and Intimate relationships
Cassandra Cooke
CC
was a first cousin of her namesake Cassandra Leigh Austen
, and first cousin once removed, as well as godmother, of the latter's daughter Jane Austen
. The older and younger novelist were not...
Family and Intimate relationships
Cassandra Cooke
Cassandra's cousin Jane Austen
criticised the household management of Samuel Cooke (who was her godfather), judging him a disagreable, fidgetty master to his servants.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
In his professional capacity he worried about competing with the Methodists
Friends, Associates
Cassandra Cooke
CC
met Warren Hastings
and his wife Marian
at Adlestrop in January 1791, and remained on friendly terms: she sent a message congratulating him at the end of his marathon trial.
Le Faye, Deirdre. A Chronology of Jane Austen and her Family. Cambridge University Press.
132, 175
She and...
Family and Intimate relationships
Blanche Warre Cornish
He later assumed his mother's birth-name, becoming Warre Cornish. He was older than his wife by seventeen years, and had fallen love with her when she was only sixteen.They had eight children together: in the...
Literary responses
Hannah Cowley
The Critical Review gave it a mixed and fairly unenthusiastic notice: it thought the play offered less pleasure to a reader than to an audience.
CC
's works were quickly made available in cheap editions, fit for the perusal of all classes.
Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland.
Partly by this means, she managed to attract many readers during the span of her career. Early critic...
Author summary
E. M. Delafield
EMD
's charming, witty novels are characterized by acute observation and good-humoured social satire. Her stories often draw from her own experiences—as an Edwardian débutante, a novice in a religious order, a war worker, and...
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...
Literary responses
E. M. Delafield
Punch gave the novel a very positive review, which Heinemann
used in their advertising: An almost uncannily penetrating study of the development of a poseuse. Told with remarkable insight and a care that is both...
Intertextuality and Influence
E. M. Delafield
The novel presents a conflict of values between an optimist, a benign canon whose five children have trouble living under his Victorian principles, and a cynic, a World War One veteran who has published an...
Material Conditions of Writing
E. M. Delafield
In the year of this publication, 1935, Virginia Woolf
wrote to her niece, Angelica Bell
, I've been seeing E. M. Delafield who writes The Provincial Lady: she is called Dashwood really; Elizabeth Dashwood; and...
Literary responses
Anita Desai
Donna Seaman
, reviewer for Booklist, invoked the comparison of AD
to Austen
and acknowledged some substance to the parallel: indeed, she is a deceptively gracious storyteller, writing like an embroiderer concealing a sword...
Textual Production
Monica Dickens
Her other introductions to literary works include one to a paperback edition of Austen
's Mansfield Park in 1972.
