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Jane Austen

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Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the most famous authors in the western canon (possibly helped along by a certain well-known Colin-Firth-diving-into-a-pond scene in the BBC Pride and Prejudice television serial adaptation). And our fascination isn't just with her works: it's with the woman herself. There are countless biographies, a museum, websites, and films: Miss Austen Regrets, Becoming Jane, and, I would argue, the 1999 Mansfield Park adaptation, wherein Fanny Price has more in common with her spirited author than with the rather prudish and timid heroine of the novel. Jane Austen [Public Domain], via Wikimedia Commons But the irony of our obsession with Jane Austen the woman is that during her lifetime, her works were all published anonymously. Her first novel to be published, Sense and Sensibility, was simply 'By a Lady'. Her next published novel, Pride and Prejudice, was 'By the Author of Sense and Sensibility. Childhood & Education Jane Austen was born into a family of lower gentry in Hampshire, where her father was Rector of Steventon. 16 December 1775. She had seven siblings: six brothers (five older, one younger), and an older sister, Cassandra. Cassandra...
Read the essay: The Anonymous Jane Austen by Kate O'Connor
# Title Description Contributor
1 What's so great about Austen? Isn't she just bonnets and balls?

Some film and tv adaptations of Jane Austen's novels might give the impression that the...

Sandie Byrne
2 The Classical Feminist Tradition (lecture)

Lecture by Professor Paul H. Fry, part of Open Yale course 'Introduction to Theory of Literature...

OpenYale
3 Genre (pt.1)

Video podcast with Dr Jane Rickard, The University of Leeds. Part 1 (of 2) + discussion forum...

Jane Rickard
4 'A Dead Silence': Reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park pt2

In the second part of this lecture on ways of reading Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park', Richard De...

Richard De Ritter
5 'A Dead Silence': Reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park pt1

Richard De Ritter from the University of Leeds discusses the different ways of reading Jane...

Richard De Ritter
6 Jane Austen's Manuscripts Explored

Professor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks around the manuscripts of Jane...

Kathryn Sutherland
7 The Watsons: Jane Austen Practising

Professor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks about some of Jane Austen'...

Kathryn Sutherland
# Title Description Contributor
1 Male memory, female subject: the case of Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft

Janet Todd gives the keynote lecture at the Silence in the Archives conference held at Wolfson...

Janet Todd
2 What's so great about Austen? Isn't she just bonnets and balls?

Some film and tv adaptations of Jane Austen's novels might give the impression that the...

Sandie Byrne
3 The real Jane Austen: A life in small things

Biographer Paula Byrne (Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson and Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the...

Paula Byrne
4 Language and History

Prof. Simon Horobin examines how the English language has changed over time, addressing such...

Simon Horobin
5 Jane Austen's Manuscripts Explored

Professor Kathyrn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks around the manuscripts of Jane...

Kathryn Sutherland
6 The Watsons: Jane Austen Practising

Professor Kathryn Sutherland from the University of Oxford talks about some of Jane Austen'...

Kathryn Sutherland
# Essay Title Description Contributor
1 The Anonymous Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1817) is one of the most famous authors in the western canon (possibly helped...

Kate O'Connor
2 Frances Burney: the "Mother of English Fiction"

By Kate O'Connor

Before there...

Kate O'Connor
# Title Description Author
1 Lady Susan

ebook version of Lady Susan

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817
2 Love and Freindship

ebook version of Love and Freindship

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817
3 The Watsons

ebook version of The Watsons

Austen, Jane, 1775-1817
4 Northanger Abbey Jane Austen
5 Lady Susan Jane Austen
6 Northanger Abbey

1798, published 1817

Jane Austen
7 Sense and sensibility Jane Austen
8 Pride and prejudice Jane Austen
9 Mansfield park Jane Austen
10 Emma Jane Austen
11 Persuasion Jane Austen
12 Introductions to Jane Austen

By John Bailey. London : Oxford University Press. 1931

John Bailey
13 Love & freindship [sic] and other early works : now first printed from the original ms.

by Jane Austen ; with a preface by G.K. Chesterton.
London : Chatto & Windus...

Jane Austen
14 Sense and sensibility

Routledge's 1883 edition

Jane Austen
15 Northanger abbey, and Persuasion.

The Parlour Library, Lond. 1853 edition

Jane Austen
16 Emma

Routledge's 1883 edition

Jane Austen
17 Pride and Prejudice

Routledge's 1883 edition

Jane Austen
18 Mansfield park

Routledge's 1883 edition

Jane Austen
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 Bennet family at home (image)

Illustration by Hugh Thomson to Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, ca. 1894. Depicts the...

2 Pride and Prejudice title page

The title page of the Richard Bentley edition of of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the first...

3 Steventon Rectory

Engraving of Steventon rectory, home of the Austen family during much of Jane Austen's lifetime...

4 Jane Austen's House in Chawton

Jane Austen lived here, in Chawton, during her final years.

Rudi Riet
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 Jane Austen’s readers (essay)

Essay with images and links by Katie Halsey part of the OpenLearn unit 'History of reading: An...

Katie Halsey
2 The uncensored Jane Austen

The early works of Jane Austen may not be as well remembered as her six novels, but as Janet...

Janet Todd