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 explains what students need to know about her novels, life, context and reception. Each novel is discussed in detail, and all the essential information about her life and literary influences, her novels and letters, and her impact on later literature and culture is covered.

Jane Austen was both a very good storyteller and a great novelist. How did she do it?Richard Jenkyns's He explores the development of her style, storytelling, and characterization, her technical prowess, and her place incomparison with her contemporaries, with a grace and wit worthy of the subject herself. All who read this book will come away with their admiration for Austen deepened, and their pleasure in her work enhanced.

The unique force of Jane Austen's novels lies in the interplay of her characters. Nothing much happens, on the surface; but, as in life, minor shifts and changes evoke enormous consequences in the lives of individuals. In this stimulating book, Ivor Morris anatomises one of her best-loved characters, Mr Collins: "conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly." His obsequious flatteries, parading self-approval, witless blunderings and hapless endeavours in romance have delighted generations of readers. By focusing on this entertaining figure, Ivor Morris has produced that rare thing - a seriously analytical and genuinely amusing study. Ivor Morris has also published on Elizabethan drama and elsewhere on Austen.

In this book, Rachel M. Brownstein considers constructions of Jane Austen as a heroine, moralist, satirist, romantic, woman, and author and the changing notions of these categories. She finds echoes of Austen's insights and techniques in contemporary Jane-o-mania, the commercially driven, erotically charged popular vogue that aims paradoxically to preserve and liberate, to correct and collaborate with old Jane. Brownstein's brilliant discussion of the distinctiveness and distinction of Austen's genius clarifies the reasons why we read the novelist-or why we should read her-and reorients the prevailing view of her work.

As a novelist, Jane Austen has been particularly recognized for her ironic voice, which dominates all her stories and gives the readers a peculiar perspective on her world. In the present book, Marie N. Sørbø investigates the function and targets of irony in two novels and seven films.