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.
Her first school, where she went at the age of six, was a little private establishment called Leopold House, which gave a grounding in English and maths and team games.
Beauman, Nicola. The Other Elizabeth Taylor. Persephone Books.
12-13
When Betty was eleven...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Taylor
As a child Betty Coles (later ET
) wrote plays (with very short scenes each demanding a new and elaborate setting) and stories. She said she always wanted to be a novelist.
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne.
2
At twelve...
Reception
Elizabeth Taylor
Although she received some glowing reviews throughout her career from some of the most distinguished of her novelistic peers, ET
has also been damned with faint praise. She has been called both the modern man's...
Literary responses
Henrietta Sykes
Jane Austen
joked in a letter about taking this novel as fact. We are just going to set off for Northumberland to be shut up in Widdrington Tower, where there must be two or three...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
These provided the pattern for Thomas Moore
's very fashionable Irish Melodies.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
62
Either Moore's or possibly Morgan's are provided by Frank Churchill for Jane Fairfax along with the famous piano in Austen
's Mansfield Park.
Literary responses
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan
Meanwhile the vogue for The Wild Irish Girl was immense: Dublin ladies were wearing scarlet cloaks and golden bodkins, as Glorvina and as Owenson did.
Campbell, Mary. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora.
71-2
She became (and remained more or less all her...
Textual Features
Lady Louisa Stuart
LLS
's letters to Scott
show her to have been a trusted and perceptive critic of his novels, which she often read before publication. On The Heart of Mid-Lothian she sent him a major critique...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Strutt
Influence of Frances Burney
's Evelina is perceptible here, and influence of Jane Austen
seems at least a possibility: a family estate is named Maple Grove, as in Emma, and the heroine's marriage to...
MS
(as Miss Stockdale) issued through her father
's firmThe Family Book; or, Children's Journal, translated from the French of Arnaud Berquin
, Interspers'd with Poetical Pieces written by the Translator...
Textual Features
Anne Stevenson
In the title-poem, each of five stanzas ends with a version of the first closing lines: we thought we were living now, / but we were living then.
Stevenson, Anne. Selected Poems, 1956-1986. Oxford University Press.
128
These we, it seems, are...
Textual Features
Anne Stevenson
Despite the strong emotion expressed in some of these poems, AS
later remembered the volume as setting free her gift for irony.
Stevenson, Anne. Between the Iceberg and the Ship. University of Michigan Press.
126
The final poem, A Legacy, On my Fiftieth Birthday, is written...
Textual Production
G. B. Stern
Sheila Kaye-Smith
and GBS
jointly published Talking of Jane Austen, an attempt at an informal record of their endless conversations about a novelist they both loved.
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery.
87
Friends, Associates
G. B. Stern
One of GBS
's close friends was Sheila Kaye-Smith
, with whom she collaborated in works about Jane Austen
. Another was Noël Coward
, who met her after sending her a fan letter, introduced...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
G. B. Stern
She interprets the idea broadly, writing, for instance, of her love of Jane Austen
and of her experience in Hollywood. The volume establishes her shameless habit of repeating herself from one book of reminiscence...
