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.
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.
204, 351
Literary responses
Constance Smedley
This work was reviewed by Mary Webb
for the Bookman in January 1925 together with Ethel Sidgwick
's Laura: A Cautionary Story and V. H. Friedlaender
's The Colour of Youth.
Crawford, Mary, and Bruce Crawford. “Selected Bibliography of Writings By and About Mary Webb”. Mary Webb, Neglected Genius.
According to Smedley...
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.
103
she...
Author summary
Eleanor Sleath
ES
was a popular novelist who published six titles, mostly with the Minerva Press
, in little more than a decade, having begun just before the close of the eighteenth century. She sometimes intersperses poetry...
Publishing
Eleanor Sleath
This book was written during a highly social period of ES
's life, and advertised in February 1799.
Czlapinski, Rebecca, and Eric C. Wheeler. Sleath Sleuth. New Eleanor Sleath Biography. http://sleathsleuth.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/new-eleanor-sleath-biography/.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 761
Most copies having been no doubt read to pieces, this is now a very rare...
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.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 761
Jane Austen
Textual Features
Edith Sitwell
Sitwell chose two women from before and five from during the eighteenth century, ten from the nineteenth century, and two from her own.
Sitwell, Edith. English Women. William Collins.
The last entry is a moving tribute to the recently deceased Virginia Woolf
Literary responses
Catherine Sinclair
The Athenæum reviewer somehow detected similarities between this book and the work of Jane Austen
.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
964 (18 April 1846): 395
The Christian Examiner expressed anxiety regarding a literary heroine abstaining from the conventional route...
Textual Features
Mary Martha Sherwood
The story is told in the first person. Royde-Smith thought the protagonist, who is clever and learns from her mistakes, resembled the heroines of Jane Austen
. Less like Austen is the fact that she...
Textual Features
Mary Shelley
MS
discussed with her correspondents emotions, ideas, politics, and books. In 1839 she voiced admiration for Jane Austen
's humour, vividness and correctness, but added that Harriet Martineau
had higher philosophical views.
Crook, Nora. “Sleuthing towards a Mary Shelley Canon”. Women’s Writing, Vol.
6
, No. 3, pp. 413-24.
424n29
Family and Intimate relationships
Sarah, Lady Pennington
Her father, John Moore
, was an apothecary practising in the fashionable resort of Bath in Somerset, who seems to have become rich in his practice. His name and place of residence appears on...
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.
Glendinning, Victoria. Vita. Penguin.
167
She feared being relegated to the category of...
Textual Production
Lady Margaret Sackville
LMS
edited a volume of selections from Jane Austen, for which she wrote an introduction.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production
Lady Margaret Sackville
LMS
's earliest works, which emerged from a romantic sense of beauty, defined her for decades of readers. In the first phase of her writing career, from 1900 to about 1915, she sought the delicate...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Lady Margaret Sackville
Austen
, she says, was the first really modern novelist . . . more modern in a sense than Dickens
or Thackeray
.
Austen, Jane. “Introduction”. Jane Austen, edited by Lady Margaret Sackville, Herbert & Daniel, p. ix - xvi.
xi
This publication, together with the anthology, suggests that LMS
was pursuing...
