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
Intertextuality and Influence John Oliver Hobbes
JOH 's speeches and interviews regularly deal with literature. In an interview with William Archer , she admits to admiring Arthur Wing Pinero 's characterisation of women, while noting how little individualised are some of...
Intertextuality and Influence Hannah More
Harriet Corp also responded, in 1817, with Coelebs Deceived, which opens with respectful critical dialogue about More's novel; but Corp's middle-aged protagonist finally decides to stay single. Mary Waldron suggests that Jane Austen 's...
Intertextuality and Influence Margaret Drabble
Imagery of postpartum fluidity, particularly lactation, characterizes the lovers' growing passion and the descriptions of female sexual desire and orgasm. The narrative alternates between a schizoid third-person dialogue
Drabble, Margaret. The Waterfall. Penguin, 1971.
130
and first-person narration as Jane attempts...
Intertextuality and Influence Anita Brookner
Again the protagonist, Kitty Maule, has a mixed national heritage: French/Russian and English. Again she is emotionally impoverished though academically successful; again she falls in love with a charismatic and unattainable man, Maurice Bishop. His...
Intertextuality and Influence Catherine Gore
She quotes Byron on the title-page.
Gore, Catherine. Cecil; or, The Adventures of a Coxcomb. R. Bentley, 1845.
title-page
As the Edinburgh Review noticed, Cecil's launching as a coxcomb takes place in 1809, the year that Byron began writing Childe Harold, and his final moral awakening...
Leisure and Society Carola Oman
In a letter to the Times in 1962, CO described a bookcase in her writing-room which held the works she described as All the Winners. For a writer of fairly conservative views and strong...
Leisure and Society Jennifer Johnston
Although JJ says she is always reading contemporary young men and women writers coming out of Ireland today,
Moloney, Caitriona et al. Irish Women Writers Speak Out: Voices From the Field. Syracuse University Press, 2003.
67
in her short list of her most beloved books Ireland is just outnumbered by England and...
Leisure and Society Edith Somerville
In her later years ES set out to extend her reading. She tried Woolf 's A Room of One's Own (at the behest of Ethel Smyth ) and admired it. But she could not like...
Leisure and Society Rumer Godden
With books hard to come by, RG read and re-read those she had, often sent her by relatives and often new publications. She called Austenexactly what I need and likened herself to Emma.
Godden, Rumer. A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep. Macmillan, 1987.
207
Leisure and Society Elizabeth Heyrick
In the year 1827 EH 's reading included all of Jane Austen 's completed novels and Mary Russell Mitford 's Our Village.
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers, 1895.
179
Literary responses Jane Taylor
Critic Stuart Curran calls this volume brilliant. He notes the resemblance of its fine irony
Curran, Stuart. “The I Altered”. Romanticism and Feminism, edited by Anne K. Mellor, Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 185-07.
192
to that of Jane Austen (despite the fundamental earnestness of Taylor's Dissenting attitudes). Presenting those attitudes as a crucial...
Literary responses Barbara Pym
BP 's father wrote to her on 3 May 1950 commending this novel, which he had not expected to enjoy since he preferred mysteries.
Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. Barbara Pym: A Critical Biography. University of Missouri Press, 1992.
157n12
Robert Liddell , who had been familiar with it throughout...
Literary responses E. M. Hull
Patricia Raub views The Sheik as the precursor of the mass-marketed romances initiated by Harlequin Romance novels in 1957.
Raub, Patricia. “Issues of Passion and Power in E. M. Hulls The SheikWomens Studies, Vol.
21
, 1992, pp. 119-28.
123
The plot line which pits a young, beautiful, inexperienced, and aristocratic heroine against a tall...
Literary responses Frances Jacson
The Critical Review did this novel proud, first listing it, then praising it warmly for its superior moral tendency.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
4th ser. 1 (1812): 668
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
4th ser. 6 (1814): 688
Sarah, Lady Davy , told Sarah Ponsonby
Literary responses Eliza Lynn Linton
Geraldine Jewsbury , reviewing this novel for the Athenæum, was none too complimentary. She thought the author had offered an ineffective sermon on this excellent moral: clever, as anything she writes is likely to...

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