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the cambridge introduction to jane austen jane austen is unique among british novelists in maintaining her popular appeal while receiving more scholarly attention now than ever before this innovative introduction by a leading scholar and editor of her work suggests what students need to know about her life context and reception while proposing a new reading of the novels each work is discussed in detail and essential information about her literary influences and her impact on later literature and culture is provided while the book considers the key areas of current critical focus its analysis remains thoroughly grounded in readings of the texts themselves janet todd outlines what makes austen s prose style and character development so experimental and gives useful starting points for the study of the major works with suggestions for further reading this book is an essential tool for all students of austen as well as for readers wanting to deepen their appreciation of the novels janet to d d is herbert j c grierson professor of english at the university of aberdeen.[close]
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cambridge introductions to literature this series is designed to introduce students to key topics and authors accessible and lively these introductions will also appeal to readers who want to broaden their understanding of the books and authors they enjoy r ideal for students teachers and lecturers r concise yet packed with essential information r key suggestions for further reading titles in this series eric bulson the cambridge introduction to james joyce john xiros cooper the cambridge introduction to t s eliot janette dillon the cambridge introduction to early english theatre jane goldman the cambridge introduction to virginia woolf david holdeman the cambridge introduction to w b yeats ronan mcdonald the cambridge introduction to samuel beckett john peters the cambridge introduction to joseph conrad martin scofield the cambridge introduction to the american short story peter thomson the cambridge introduction to english theatre 16601900 janet todd the cambridge introduction to jane austen[close]
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from fragments on the theory and practice of landscape gardening by h repton assisted by his son j a repton london printed by t bensley and son for j taylor 1816 opposite p 58 reproduced by permission of the syndics of cambridge university library.[close]
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cambridge university press cambridge new york melbourne madrid cape town singapore são paulo cambridge university press the edinburgh building cambridge cb2 2ru uk published in the united states of america by cambridge university press new york www.cambridge.org information on this title www.cambridge.org/9780521858069 © janet todd 2006 this publication is in copyright subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of cambridge university press first published in print format 2006 isbn-13 isbn-10 isbn-13 isbn-10 isbn-13 isbn-10 978-0-511-24238-0 ebook netlibrary 0-511-24238-7 ebook netlibrary 978-0-521-85806-9 hardback 0-521-85806-2 hardback 978-0-521-67469-0 paperback 0-521-67469-7 paperback cambridge university press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is or will remain accurate or appropriate.[close]
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contents preface list of abbreviations page vii ix 1 18 36 47 60 75 94 114 132 134 146 148 1 life and times 2 the literary context 3 northanger abbey 4 sense and sensibility 5 pride and prejudice 6 mansfield park 7 emma 8 persuasion afterword notes further reading index vii[close]
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preface in this introductory study i am offering a detailed reading of the six completed novels of jane austen together with enough background material for a student to locate the works in their historical moment this is especially important for those novels conceived at chawton in the last years of the revolutionary and napoleonic wars i have however concentrated on what strikes me as contributing most to jane austen s universal popularity her ability to create the illusion of psychologically believable and self-reflecting characters her novels are investigations of selfhood particularly female the oscillating relationship of feeling and reason the interaction of present and memory and the constant negotiation between desire and society charlotte bront¨ memorably wrote that e austen avoided the passions that she rejected `even a speaking acquaintance e with that stormy sisterhood 1 although in a mode quite different from bront¨ jane austen sometimes ironic rarely unrestrained has nonetheless become for me on this latest rereading a writer about passion i am not suggesting that she unequivocally celebrates it but that through her representation of character she reveals a fascination with its literary construction and narcissistic power and at times its absurdity in the eighteenth century medical writers experimental scientists philosophers and the literate public were intensely interested in the subject of the self especially the emotional self living mammals were cut open to see their hearts pump less brutally human beings were subject to almost scientific inspection there grew up `an experimental approach to the knowledge of character so that emotion `caused by misfortune evil agents an author or a scientist can invite either objective scrutiny or sympathetic identification 2 the novel served this interest through its experiments with character while its representations often accorded with attitudes in contemporary medicine and philosophy in a celebrated passage of tristram shandy 175967 laurence sterne s narrator remarks that if there had been a window onto `the human breast nothing more would have been wanting in order to have taken a man s character but to have taken a chair and gone softly as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive and looked in viewed the soul stark naked but our minds shine not ix[close]
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x preface through the body 3 austen s novels allow limited transparency of the feeling body but only after the reader has done more than draw up a chair i have composed the introduction while overseeing the cambridge edition of jane austen s complete works and a volume of contextual entries some of the arguments and material of the editors and contributors have undoubtedly seeped into the book and following a remark in emma `seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken i hope i have noted direct influence and i apologise for inadvertent or distorted borrowing i would especially like to thank deirdre le faye richard cronin dorothy mcmillan john wiltshire edward copeland and brian southam i have appreciated suggestions from david hewitt derek hughes and jennifer maccann in addition i am most grateful to linda bree at cambridge university press for her careful reading of the manuscript my main debt is to antje blank for her help and many insights.[close]
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abbreviations l fr memoir jane austen s letters ed deirdre le faye third edition oxford university press 1995 referred to in the text by page numbers deirdre le faye jane austen a family record second edition cambridge university press 2004 james edward austen-leigh a memoir of jane austen and other family recollections ed kathryn sutherland oxford world s classics 2002 quotations from jane austen s novels are taken from the cambridge edition of the works of jane austen and sourced to volume and chapter using the following abbreviations e emma mp mansfield park na northanger abbey p persuasion p&p pride and prejudice s&s sense and sensibility subheadings in this book are taken sometimes slightly adjusted from jane austen s letters her novels and well-known biographical and critical works xi[close]
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chapter 1 life and times jane austen is one of the great writers of english literature because no reader and no period exhausts her books something always escapes from a reading while every reading enriches like the town of lyme in persuasion the novels `must be visited and visited again in this respect the comparison with william shakespeare often made in the mid to late nineteenth century is apt she shares with him too a rare crossover appeal achieving both academic and popular status the object of scholarly analysis and cult enthusiasm inevitably there is uneasiness across the boundary the academy worries about studying work with such mass appeal such easy intimacy with film and television while the public has become irritated by the exploiting deconstructing abstracting genderising politicising and sexualising of their heroine despite differing readerly anxieties however nobody can doubt that jane austen serves something of the bible s former function helping to make a shared community of reference for the literate english-speaker her work insinuates itself into the way we think and talk or wish to talk this is a more visual than literary age but for many of us jane austen s novels still function as the works of radcliffe burney cowper and scott did for her heroines saturating our minds and attitudes not a life of event her biography depends on written evidence outside her novels for she is one of the least overtly autobiographical of authors there is no female writer or witty older spinster in her works and no heroine who rejects marriage as she did or who lies on her sickbed mocking hypochondria almost all the information on jane austen comes from her family mostly from letters written to her sister cassandra who selected some as family souvenirs and rejected others long before they reached the public they begin in 1796 after the earliest works had been drafted the letters are augmented by pious memoirs from her brother and nephew the `biographical notice 1817 by henry austen and a memoir of jane austen 1870 by james edward austen-leigh both of 1[close]
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2 the cambridge introduction to jane austen which stress the familial constricted nature of her life and lack of romantic passion outside these sources little is known of austen compared to her celebrated contemporaries lord byron or percy bysshe shelley for example whose daily sometimes hourly activities and thoughts are documented as a result much remains hidden perhaps her most intimate aspects and yet as john wiltshire has remarked we have for jane austen `a fantasy of access a dream of possession 1 each generation makes a consistent image of the author a new commodity in keeping with its own desires the kindly spinster of the nineteenth century the baulked romantic heroine of the twentieth and the ambitious professional author of the present jane austen was born on 16 december 1775 into a web of family connections which included on one side the rich and influential leighs of stoneleigh abbey and the knights of godmersham and on the other clerics and an apprentice milliner her father george austen was a country rector of latitudinarian or liberal views in the village of steventon in the southern english county of hampshire and her mother cassandra n´ e leigh daughter of a former e fellow of oxford s all souls college had aristocratic links george austen had obtained a parish through the interest of thomas knight the rich husband of his second cousin later he acquired a second living at neighbouring deane through his uncle francis thomas knight owned not only the steventon living but also the manor of steventon with all its dependent houses and holdings to the austens he rented a nearby farm with which george added about a third to his clerical income together with his reliance on tithes this must have given the family a keen interest in agriculture and agricultural improvements.2 to augment his income still further george took in well-to-do boys to prepare for university by 1779 there were four pupils living at the rectory while common for anglican clergymen such activity still suggests the rather insecure family status of george austen just on the edge of the gentry it contributed to his daughter s lifelong concern for money and the nuances of class although less important than native intelligence and good sense birth and breeding mattered being a gentleman or a gentleman s daughter with the manners and mannerly attitudes implied george and cassandra austen were cultivated people in his son henry s words george with his library of over 500 books was `a profound scholar with `most exquisite taste and cassandra composed skilful comic verse on local people and events a common pastime within her community the pair had eight children beyond a handicapped boy who was sent from home to live in a neighbouring community and is unmentioned in the `biographical notice and memoir the austen sons did reasonably well james followed his father into the steventon living edward was adopted by the rich knight relatives,[close]
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