Jane Austen
Austen, Jane - ôˈstən, 1775–1817, English novelist. The daughter of a clergyman, she spent the first 25 years of her life at "Steventon," her father's Hampshire vicarage. Here her first novels, Pride and Prejudice,Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey, were written, although they were not published until much later. On her father's retirement in Read More...
Austen, Jane - ôˈstən, 1775–1817, English novelist. The daughter of a clergyman, she spent the first 25 years of her life at "Steventon," her father's Hampshire vicarage. Here her first novels, Pride and Prejudice,Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey, were written, although they were not published until much later. On her father's retirement in 1801, the family moved to Bath for several years and then to Southampton, settling finally at Chawton Cottage, near Alton, Hampshire, which was Jane's home for the rest of her life. Northanger Abbey, a satire on the Gothic romance, was sold to a publisher for £10 in 1803, but as it was not published, was bought back by members of the family and was finally issued posthumously. The novels published in Austen's lifetime were Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). Persuasion was issued in 1818 with Northanger Abbey. The author's name did not appear on any of her title pages, and although her own friends knew of her authorship, she received little public recognition in her lifetime. Jane Austen's novels are comedies of manners that depict the self-contained world of provincial ladies and gentlemen. Most of her works revolve around the delicate business of providing husbands for marriageable daughters. She is particularly noted for her vivid delineations and lively interplay of character, her superb sense of comic irony, and her moral firmness. She ridicules the silly, the affected, and the stupid, ranging in her satire from light portraiture in her early works to more scornful exposures in her later novels. Her writing was subjected to the most careful polishing. She was quite aware of her special excellences and limitations, comparing herself to a miniaturist. Today she is regarded as one of the great masters of the English novel. Her minor works include her Juvenilia, the novel Lady Susan, and the fragments The Watsons and Sanditon. See her letters (ed. by R. W. Chapman, 2d ed. 1965); biographies by J. A. Hodge (1972), J. Halperin (1986), P. Honan (1988), V. G. Myer (1997), D. Nokes (1997), C. Tomalin (1997), and C. Shields (2001); studies by A. W. Litz (1965), F. W. Bradbook (1966), A. M. Duckworth (1971), K. Kroeber (1971), F. B. Pinion (1973), S. M. Tave (1973), and C. Johnson (1988). The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved. |
Jane Austen
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Jane Austen's letters afford a unique insight into the daily life of the novelist: intimate and gossipy, observant and informative, they bring alive her family and friends, her surroundings and contemporary events with a freshness unparalleled in modern biographies. R W Chapman's ground-breaking edition of the Letters first appeared in 1932, and a second edition followed twenty years later. For this third edition Le Faye has added new material that has come to light since 1952, and reordered the letters into their correct chronological sequence. She has provided new biographical, topographical and general indexes, discreet annotation, and information on watermarks, postmarks and other physical details of the manuscripts. The edition has also been redesigned for ease of reading and reference.
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Jane Austen significantly shaped the development of the English novel, and her works continue to be read widely today. In addition, her writings have attracted considerable critical and scholarly attention. This reference is a guide to her works and the response to them. Each of her major works is the subject of a reader-response oriented essay and a separate bibliographical survey. In addition, separate chapters overview her letters, poems, and prayers. Thus, the companion offers a convenient summary of scholarship on Austen and fresh readings of her works.
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Generations of readers and movie viewers have been drawn to the spirited heroines of Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Prepared especially for students, this full-length critical study of Jane Austen covers her six most beloved works, including the two novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, published posthumously. Young readers will enjoy the vivid biographical account of how Austen herself was just a teenager when she took up the pen and began to write in guarded secrecy. Austen scholar Debra Teachman has a historian's eye for detail as she describes Austen's homelife in the English countryside and the social environment that were so much a part of Austen's stories. Teachman examines each novel, relating how historical context influenced the characters, events and themes that Austen developed. Teachman eloquently points out, for example, that while Austen does not overtly preach feminism in any of her novels, the lack of legal protection for women is a vital societal theme in Sense and Sensibility. Her discussion of the economic realities at the core of Austen's novels will help readers appreciate that works like the best-selling Pride and Prejudice are more than just charming stories.
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This book presents Jane Austen as a radical innovator. It explores the nature of her confrontation with the popular novelists of her time, and demonstrates how her challenge to them transformed fiction. Mary Waldron shows how Austen's novels exemplify the strong skepticism about contemporary notions of the proper content and purpose of fiction that is evident from family letters and other sources. In thus identifying her literary motivation, this book offers a fresh and unifying critique of the novels.
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Recreating Jane Austen is a book for readers who know and love Austen's work. Stimulated by the recent crop of film and television versions of Austen's novels, John Wiltshire examines how her work has been "recreated" in another age and medium. Written in an engaging and readable style, this accessible study approaches the central question of the role Jane Austen plays in the contemporary cultural imagination.
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In Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England , Roger Sales looks at Jane Austen's entire oeuve, and views her historically as a Regency writer voicing concerns on the condition of England.Examining Austen's literary works; her letters - in the context of those of other Regency women; as well as contemporary texts such as television adaptations of her work, Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England reconstructs the breadth of Jane Austen's writing. It also examines:* her representations of dandyism and masculine identities* the events of the Regency crisis of 1810-12* the way in which Austen engaged in topical debates such as healthcare in both Emma and Persuasion .
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Michael Giffin offers a reading of Austen's six published novels against the background of a 'long 18th century' that stretched from the Restoration to the Regency. He demonstrates that Austen is a neoclassical author of the enlightenment who writes through the twin prisms of British Empiricism and Georgian Anglicanism. Giffin's focus is on how Austen's novels mirror a belief in natural law and natural order and how they reflect John Locke's theory of knowledge through reason, revelation, and reflection on experience.
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One of the most important novelists of the early 19th century, Jane Austen (1775-1817) continues to be read and studied today. Throughout her novels, she creates characters who embody various virtues and limitations. The best characters represent the best behavior, just as the less admirable ones behave in less admirable ways. The courtesy books of the 18th century advise certain moral behavior for character development. This book studies Austen's parallels to 18th century courtesy books. Educational and recreational activities in Austen's novels, such as reading, dancing, card-playing, and theatre-going, are often similar to those activities recommended in the courtesy books with which Austen would have been familiar. So too, various social activities and personal characteristics depicted in Austen's novels frequently accord with courtesy book recommendations.
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This volume offers a unique contribution to both postcolonial studies and Austen scholarship by *examining the texts to illumine nineteenth century attitudes to colonialism and the expanding Empire *revealing a new range of interpretations of Austen's work, each shaped by the critic's particular context *exploring the ways in which the study of Austen's novels raises fresh issues for post-colonial criticism. Bringing together work by highly-respected critics from four continents and a range of disciplines, this newly paperbacked volume allows sometimes surprising and always fascinating new insights into some of the most frequently studied - and best loved - novels in the English language.
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