Review of The Making of Jane Austen

A review of Devoney Looser's study of the popular reception of Jane Austen's novels over more than two centuries, with the emphasis on illustrations, films, stage plays, ephemera, news stories, texts read in schools. It is an original, important and well-written book. It is valuable for the highly unusual areas she studies, for information about and clear descriptions of texts probably unknown to many Austen scholars and/or Janeites alike (this is a feat), for the critical intelligence and close reading she applies to some of these; and, for her tales of poignant lives of a few people who ought to be remembered with respect for the significant contribution they made to the ways many people read Austen's texts today

Cadernos do IL, 2018

ABSTRACT Jane Austen is one of the most important and widely known authors in the English language. Despite her unrelenting fame, very little is known about the actual woman who lived from 1775 to 1816 – her family claimed she led a quiet life and they burned her presumably most compromising letters. Readers and scholars were left with an unfinished sketch by Austen’s sister, Cassandra, later modified to fit the Victorian expectations of what a proper lady ought to be. In 2011, a new portrait was found, one of a mature and independent authoress. This essay aims to look at Austen’s life in order to glimpse at the woman behind the images, understanding how Austen’s image changed alongside her readers, and perhaps because of them. Key-words: Jane Austen, portraits, biography, English Literature.

Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 2000

2010

My essay is dealing with different roles mirrored in Jane Austen's collected letters, focusing on the stylistic and topical differences and similarities between the narrative style of her prose and that of the letters. Austen's letters are addressed mainly to family members and friends (with a few important exceptions), their topic varying from exchange of information about family members and events concerning the Austens to personal reflections of the letter-writer, and some (very few but well elaborated) considerations about her own creations and the nature of fiction-writing itself. A close reading of Jane Austen's correspondence also reveals the everyday reality of England at the time of the Napoleonic wars, serves as a background to Austen's well-known and ever popular novels, but most of all offers a precise description of the status of a woman writer in the last decades of the eighteenth century, the obstacles and possibilities to be found in her way. The way ...

The Sewanee Review, 2016

2009

‘Jane Austen and her Readers, 1786–1945’ is a study of the history of reading Jane Austen’s novels. It discusses Austen’s own ideas about books and readers, the uses she makes of her reading, and the aspects of her style that are related to the ways in which she has been read. The volume considers the role of editions and criticism in directing readers’ responses, and presents and analyses a variety of source material related to the ordinary readers who read Austen’s works between 1786 and 1945.