A Companion to Jane Austen

A Companion to Jane Austen provides a comprehensive survey of contemporary Austen studies while covering the full breadth of the novelist′s work and career. Focusing on changing contexts and cultures of reception, the text provides groundbreaking new interpretations in more than forty essays by a distinguished team of influential literary critics and Austen scholars. Sections include: The Life and the Texts; Reading the Texts; Literary Genres and Genealogies; Political, Social and Cultural Worlds; and Reception and Reinvention. As a scholarly reference and comprehensive survey of the most innovative speculative developments in the field, A Companion to Jane Austen illuminates the power of Austen′s novels to enchant readers.

List of Figures ix

Notes on Contributors x

List of Abbreviations xvii

A Note to the Reader xviii

Acknowledgments xix

Introduction 1
Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite

Part I The Life and the Texts 11

1 Jane Austen′s Life and Letters 13
Kathryn Sutherland

2 The Austen Family Writing: Gossip, Parody, and Corporate Personality 31
Robert L. Mack

3 The Literary Marketplace 41
Jan Fergus

4 Texts and Editions 51
Brian Southam

5 Jane Austen, Illustrated 62
Laura Carroll and John Wiltshire

Part II Reading the Texts 79

6 Young Jane Austen: Author 81
Juliet McMaster

7 Moving In and Out: The Property of Self in Sense and Sensibility 91
Susan C. Greenfi eld

8 The Illusionist: Northanger Abbey and Austen’s Uses of Enchantment 101
Sonia Hofkosh

9 Re: Reading Pride and Prejudice: "What think you of books?" 112
Susan J. Wolfson

10 The Missed Opportunities of Mansfi eld Park 123
William Galperin

11 Emma: Word Games and Secret Histories 133
Linda Bree

12 Persuasion: The Gradual Dawning 143
Fiona Stafford

13 Sanditon and the Book 153
George Justice

Part III Literary Genres and Genealogies 163

14 Turns of Speech and Figures of Mind 165
Margaret Anne Doody

15 Narrative Technique: Austen and Her Contemporaries 185
Jane Spencer

16 Time and Her Aunt 195
Michael Wood

17 Austen′s Realist Play 206
Harry E. Shaw

18 Dealing in Notions and Facts: Jane Austen and History Writing 216
Devoney Looser

19 Sentiment and Sensibility: Austen, Feeling, and Print Culture 226
Miranda Burgess

20 The Gothic Austen 237
Nancy Armstrong

Part IV Political, Social, and Cultural Worlds 249

21 From Politics to Silence: Jane Austen’s Nonreferential Aesthetic 251
Mary Poovey

22 The Army, the Navy, and the Napoleonic Wars 261
Gillian Russell

23 Jane Austen, the 1790s, and the French Revolution 272
Mary Spongberg

24 Feminisms 282
Vivien Jones

25 Imagining Sameness and Difference: Domestic and Colonial Sisters in Mansfield Park 292
Deirdre Coleman

26 Jane Austen and the Nation 304
Claire Lamont

27 Religion 314
Roger E. Moore

28 Family Matters 323
Ruth Perry

29 Austen and Masculinity 332
E. J. Clery

30 The Trouble with Things: Objects and the Commodifi cation of Sociability 343
Barbara M. Benedict

31 Luxury: Making Sense of Excess in Austen’s Narratives 355
Diego Saglia

32 Austen′s Accomplishment: Music and the Modern Heroine 366
Gillen D′Arcy Wood

33 Jane Austen and Performance: Theatre, Memory, and Enculturation 377
Daniel O′Quinn

Part V Reception and Reinvention 389

34 Jane Austen and Genius 391
Deidre Lynch

35 Jane Austen′s Periods 402
Mary A. Favret

36 Nostalgia 413
Nicholas Dames

37 Austen′s European Reception 422
Anthony Mandal

38 Jane Austen and the Silver Fork Novel 434
Edward Copeland

39 Jane Austen in the World: New Women, Imperial Vistas 444
Katie Trumpener

40 Sexuality 456
Fiona Brideoake

41 Jane Austen and Popular Culture 467
Judy Simons

42 Austenian Subcultures 478
Mary Ann O′Farrell

Bibliography 488

Index 513

Claudia L. Johnson is Chair of the Department of English at Princeton University. Her previous books include Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel (1988), Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender and Sentimentality in the 1790s (1995), and The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft (2002), along with editions of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1998), Sense and Sensibility (2002), and Northanger Abbey (2003). Her forthcoming works include Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures, tracing permutations of “Jane mania” from 1817 to the present, and Raising the Novel, which explores modern efforts to create a novelistic canon by elevating novels to keystones of high culture.

Clara Tuite is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon (2002, 2008), as well as several essays on Austen, and the co–editor, with Gillian Russell, of Romantic Sociability: Social Networks and Literary Culture in Britain, 1770–1840 (2002, 2006).

"The advantage is that the chapters tend to be manageable, clear, and focused – perfect, in fact, for assigning to undergraduate and beginning graduate students." ( Notes and Queries, March 2010)

"This book would be a worthy addition to any university, school and even private library in a place where Austen is read and re–read." (Transnational Literature , May 2009)

"Austenites should be delighted with this comprehensive survey of contemporary Austen studies. [...] This should become a standard Austen reference. Highly recommended." (Choice, August 2009)