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.
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
Literary responses George Eliot
John Morley , anonymously in the Saturday Review, noted that [o]ne of the puzzles, which runs pathetically through Felix Holt as through Romola and the The Mill on the Floss, is the evil...
Literary responses Isabella Neil Harwood
This novel generated a large amount of attention and positive reviews. They all made some points in common: they loved the plot, the way Minnie/Minna's character developed, the originality and the sustained interest it provided...
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen 's nephew James Austen-Leigh compared it to the work of Austen and Scott ...
Literary responses Ann Radcliffe
AR 's rival M. G. Lewis finished reading Udolpho within ten days of its publication, though he had during the same time travelled from England to the Hague.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press, 1999.
93
In 1825 Ann Lister eagerly traced...
Literary responses Isak Dinesen
When this, like ID 's first book, became a Book-of-the-Month Club choice, she felt it would cheapen the recognition awarded the earlier work—showing that she misinterpreted this commercial honour as a purely critical one.
Thurman, Judith. Isak Dinesen: The Life of Karen Blixen. Penguin, 1984.
312
Literary responses Elizabeth Gaskell
Critic Jenny Uglow argues that My Lady Ludlow is an important—an original and brave
Uglow, Jennifer S. Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories. Faber and Faber, 1993.
468
book—although its experiment in creating a feminine fiction based on women's lives, carefully observed, is not entirely successful. In terms...
Literary responses Elizabeth Jenkins
The novel was criticised by some for its exclusively upper-middle-class reach—a view which was energetically countered by Rose Macaulay on a radio programme.
Jenkins, Elizabeth. The View from Downshire Hill. Michael Johnson, 2004.
107
The Times Literary Supplement welcomed with joy a novel where the...
Literary responses Emma Marshall
One of EM 's clerical admirers called this book a particularly strong instance of the way her heroines (if not quite up to Jane Austen 's Anne Elliot or Charlotte Yonge 's Violet in Heartsease...
Literary responses Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
Jane Austen called this novel very good and clever, but tedious.
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press, 1993.
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
During her lifetime CY was ranked as a serious novelist with Austen , Trollope , Balzac , and Zola . Contemporaries like Louisa Alcott , Margaret Oliphant , Ellen Wood , and Rhoda Broughton made...
Literary responses Elizabeth Gaskell
Reviews were extremely positive. Most expressed a sense of loss to English letters at EG 's recent death, and compared Wives and Daughters to her other well-loved book, Cranford. The Athenæum likened the style...
Literary responses Anne Plumptre
Kotzebue was then all the rage. The Critical Review discussed AP 's The Natural Son in December 1798, explaining the changes made in her version for stage presentation, and considering her biography of Kotzebue. But...
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, 2010.
According to Smedley...
Literary responses Anita Brookner
Critic John Bayley found AB on top of her form in this novel, spinning a plot line as strong as any of Jane Austen 's.
“Pages of pleasure”. Guardian Weekly, 1–7 Jan. 2004, pp. 12-13.
12
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...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.