Jane Austen's creative process has been largely unexamined. This book explores her development as a writer: what she adapted from tradition for her needs; what she learned novel to novel; how she used that learning in future works; and how her ultimate mastery of fiction changed the course of English literature. Jane Austen overcame the limitations of early fiction by pivoting from superficial adventures to the psychological studies that have defined the novel since. Her creativity and technique grew as she wrestled with pragmatic writing issues. This evaluation of Austen's creative process brings into focus the strengths and weaknesses of her six novels. Each is examined in its use of major fictional techniques--description, scene-building, point of view, and psychological development--to reveal unique literary attributes. The result is a revealing analysis of how world-class fiction is built from the ground up.

A Reading of Jane Austen (first published by Peter Owen in 1975) has established itself with critics and readers as an outstanding contribution to the growing literature on this author, full of fresh and stimulating perceptions. Central to the word is Barbara Hardy's view of Jane Austen as the originator of the modern novel, largely through her creation of a new and flexible medium enabling her to move easily from sympathy to detachment, from one mind to many minds, from solitary scenes to social gatherings.

The Critical Review brings together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling student and researcher to read the material themselves.

However much students enjoy their reading of a Jane Austen novel, many find it difficult to know how to organise their critical responses. This book shows students how to develop a firm grasp of Jane Austen's characters, themes and techniques, as well as such central topics as the use of irony in the novels, and their style and moral patterning. In the newly revised and expanded edition of this successful book, Vivien Jones looks at all of Jane Austen's novels, and demonstrates how to analyse both their overall structure and concerns as well as individual passages. A completely new chapter looks at current critical debates about Austen's achievement and the final chapter gives practical advice on writing an essay.

The first novel of the author's maturity, Mansfield Park is complex, highly wrought, and experimental. It marks a transitional stage between the first two published novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, and Jane Austen's greatest achievements, Emma and Persuasion. It has been suggested that Mansfield Park is the writer's most autobiographical novel and that, in seeing through the eyes of Fanny Price, deemed the most moralising and judgemental of her heroines, we are seeing through the eyes of Austen herself. Though Fanny Price may be too virtuous for modern readers to take to their hearts, in Mrs Norris Austen creates one of her best, because most plausible, monsters; while in the estate of Mansfield Park itself we find some of the most fully realised descriptions of domestic interiors and exteriors in Austen's fiction. This Guide traces the response to Mansfield Park from the opinions of Jane Austen's contemporaries, through 19th century reviews and 20th century critical analyses, including deconstructionist, feminist, postcolonial and poststructuralist, to diverse 21st century approaches to the novel. Sandie Byrne selects the most useful and insightful of these responses and puts them in context, providing the reader with an essential and approachable introduction to the range of critical debate on this important novel.

Perhaps the first modern novelist, Jane Austen (1775-1817) has left an indelible mark on the world of letters. She is best known as the author of penetrating studies of domestic life and manners, and her novels such as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Mansfield Park (1814) continue to be read and appreciated today. Yet Austen also wrote numerous other pieces and a substantial body of letters. While her novels have received large amounts of critical attention, scholars have also increasingly studied her other writings, and Austen scholarship continues to grow each year. This reference book is an accurate, comprehensive, and detailed guide to her life and career. A chronology outlines the principal events in her life and places her within larger literary and historical contexts. The several hundred alphabetically arranged entries that follow identify characters and family members, discuss works and themes, and synthesize the large body of criticism that has grown around her works. Every one of her texts, including all of her minor writings, has a separate entry, as have most of her fictional characters. Entries for individual works typically provide details of composition and publication, a plot summary and critical commentary, a list of characters, and bibliographical references. The volume closes with an extensive bibliography of works by and about her.

By the time Ian Watt published The Rise of the Novel. in 1957, it was clear that many women novelists before Jane Austen had been overlooked in critical studies of literature and that some of them had been completely forgotten by the reading public. In this book, Brian Corman explores the question of how and why this came about. Corman provides a systematic survey of the reputations of early women novelists as canons of the novel developed over a period of roughly two hundred years, and, in so doing, suggests reasons for their frequent exclusion. Women Novelists before Jane Austen challenges the view that exclusion from the canon was a simple function of gender and goes deeper to examine potential reasons why certain women writers were overlooked. In the process, it provides an overview of histories of the British novel from the beginning through to the mid-twentieth century, ending with the publication of Watt's famous text. Further, Corman offers a prolegomenon to the important recovery work of the late-twentieth century in which many revised accounts of the history of the novel appeared, essentially improving the scope covered by Watt. This study historicizes the place of early women novelists in the British canon in order to provide an informed context for current views.

This sourcebook introduces not only Jane Austen's text, but also the literary and historical contexts and the many different critical readings that it has generated, from the time of its publication to the twenty-first century.

A classic account of Jane Austen in the context of eighteenth century feminist ideas and contemporary thought.