Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays

This volume brings together nineteen essays that marked the bicentenary of Jane Austen's birth and reflect twentieth-century critical attitudes.

John Halperin (Author)

9780521099295, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 November 1975

348 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.66 kg

This book was first published in 1975, the bicentenary of Jane Austen's birth. Though she has long been recognized as one of the major English novelists her reputation was established relatively late and has withstood periods of neglect and controversy. The present volume brings together nineteen essays that marked the bicentenary and in doing so reflected the critical attitudes which some of the twentieth century's most influential scholars have entertained towards the novelist. These essays range from nineteenth-century reactions to the novels and to the novelist herself, through twentieth-century criticism of the individual novels, to considerations of the novelist's reputation abroad. This book will be of interest both to scholars and students of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction and also to the general reader of Jane Austen's novels.

Part I. Some Backgrounds: Introduction
1. Jane Austen's nineteenth-century critics: Walter Scott to Henry James John Halperin
2. From the Iliad to Jane Austen via The Rape of the Lock Reuben A. Brower
3. Jane Austen and one of her contemporaries Stuart M. Tave
4. Jane Austen and her publishers Jane Aiken Hodge
Part II. Novels: 5. 'The pen of the contriver': the four fictions of Northanger Abbey Katrin Ristkok Burlin
6. Admiring Pope no more than is proper: Sense and Sensibility Everett Zimmerman
7. E pluribus unum: parts and whole in Pride and Prejudice Robert B. Heilman
8. Pride and Prejudice: fiction's lasting novelty Karl Kroeber
9. Mansfield Park: freedom and the family R. F. Brissenden
10. The two voices of Fanny Price Kenneth L. Moler
11. The objects in Mansfield Park Barbara Hardy
12. The worlds of Emma: Jane Austen and Cowper John Halperin
13. Emma: point counter point Joseph Wiesenfarth
14. Persuasion: forms of estrangement A. Walton Litz
Part III. Views and Reviews: 15. Jane Austen and the novel Mary Lascelles
16. Jane Austen's drawing room Marvin Mudrick
17. Jane Austen's monsters Donald Greene.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]