Jane Austen: A Very Short Introduction

Description

Jane Austen is one of the most widely-read novelists in the English language, and one of very few pre-Victorian writers to have a large popular following. This book situates Austen in the literary and historical context of her time, and combines critical introductions to each of her six major novels with the exploration of key themes of her work.

• Introduces the six major novels of Jane Austen, a perenially popular author, as well as her other writings
• Combines critical introductions to each of Austen's six major novels with the exploration of key themes of her work
• Emphasizes the social and historical context of Austen's fiction, and her satirical response to her contemporary world
• Explores the literary and publishing context of Austen's fiction, and discusses her technical innovations
• Part of the Very Short Intorductions series - over ten million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Tom Keymer, University of Toronto

Tom Keymer is Chancellor Henry N. R. Jackman University Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He has published numerous books about Restoration, eighteenth-century, and Romantic-period literature and culture, including Poetics of the Pillory: English Literature and Seditious Libel 1660-1820 (OUP, 2019), Sterne, the Moderns, and the Novel (OUP, 2002), and, as editor, The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume 1: Prose Fiction in English from the Origins of Print to 1750 (OUP, 2017). He has also edited works by Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, and others in the Oxford World's Classics series. He is General Editor of the Review of English Studies and co-General Editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Samuel Richardson.

Table of Contents

Notes on editions
Introduction
1:Jane Austen practising
2:The terrors of Northanger Abbey
3:Sense, sensibility, society
4:The voices of Pride and Prejudice
5:The silence at Mansfield Park
6:Emma and Englishness
7:Passion and Persuasion
Afterword
Timeline
References
Further reading
Index