Jane Austen and the Fiction of her Time / Edition 1

by Mary Waldron

Overview

This book presents Jane Austen as a radical innovator. It explores the nature of her confrontation with the popular novelists of her time, and demonstrates how her challenge to them transformed fiction. Mary Waldron shows how Austen's novels exemplify the strong skepticism about contemporary notions of the proper content and purpose of fiction that is evident from family letters and other sources. In thus identifying her literary motivation, this book offers a fresh and unifying critique of the novels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521003889
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/14/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.02(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.43(d)
Lexile:	1430L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. The juvenilia, the early unfinished novels and Northanger Abbey; 2. The non-heiresses: The Watsons and Pride and Prejudice; 3. Sense and the single girl; 4. The frailties of Fanny; 5. Men of sense and silly wives - the confusions of Mr Knightley; 6. Rationality and rebellion: Persuasion and the model girl; 7. Sanditon - Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Waldron's ambitious work opens up Austen's oeuvre to new avenues of research." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

"[Waldron's] close reading and accurate analysis of the novels remind us of the importance - and the difficulty, too - of this basic work in the study of literature..." Eighteenth-Century Fiction

"[Waldron's] close reading and accurate analysis of the novels remind us of the importance - and the difficulty, too - of this basic work in the study of literature..." Eighteenth-Century Fiction

"With many scholarly articles on women's writing and eighteenth-century literature... to her credit, Mary Waldron brings her excellent abilities to a unifying critical interpretation of Jane Austen's novels." Victorian Periodicals Review

From the Publisher