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 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...
Intertextuality and Influence E. M. Delafield
The novel presents a conflict of values between an optimist, a benign canon whose five children have trouble living under his Victorian principles, and a cynic, a World War One veteran who has published an...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Ham
The story opens with the young Englishwoman Rhoda Ford (the unbeautiful one of two sisters) and her family in the west of Ireland, where her father has an entrepreneurial scheme. They try to come...
Intertextuality and Influence Dodie Smith
The book is narrated in the first person by seventeen-year-old Cassandra, a budding writer. As she explains, I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how...
Intertextuality and Influence E. B. C. Jones
The book positions itself in relation to cultural, social and emotional markers that are not those of a majority in later times. Helen and Felicia read Northanger Abbey aloud, and Helen admits it to be...
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
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...
Literary responses Elizabeth von Arnim
This novel elicited a wide range of responses from reviewers. John Middleton Murry consoled EA when she received harsh criticism in the Times Literary Supplement. He told her there was no way to protect...
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 Maria Edgeworth
John Ward, later Earl of Dudley , who had at first admired ME 's tales, later compared her to her disadvantage with Jane Austen (whose name, however, he did not know) and suspected Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Literary responses Angela Thirkell
Reviewers were complimentary. One called the book an amusing pastiche in the manner of Jane Austen .
Strickland, Margot. Angela Thirkell: Portrait of a Lady Novelist. Duckworth, 1977.
114
Literary responses Anita Desai
Donna Seaman , reviewer for Booklist, invoked the comparison of AD to Austen and acknowledged some substance to the parallel: indeed, she is a deceptively gracious storyteller, writing like an embroiderer concealing a sword...

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