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| 3/29/1815 |
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Austen, Emma, and the Prince
On this day in 1815, Jane Austen completed Emma, the last of her novels to appear in her lifetime. That it appeared with a dedication to the Prince Regent, a person whose debauched lifestyle Austen had condemned, and a type she would normally satirize, is a story that might itself have stepped from one of her books -- all of them written by "laughing at myself or other people." |
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| 7/18/1817 |
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Jane Austen Remaindered
On this day in 1817, Jane Austen died, at the age of forty-one. She had been increasingly ill over the previous year and a half, probably from a hormonal disorder like Addison's Disease. Austen's devoted older sister, Cassandra, inherited all the author's papers, from which she expurgated some but not all of Jane's enduring wit and one-liners. |
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| 10/30/1811 |
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Sense and Sensibility read it now!
On this day in 1811 Jane Austen's first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was published. Early reviewers found it to be "a genteel, well-written novel" as far as "domestic literature" went, and "just long enough to interest without fatiguing." Virginia Woolf would take a different view: "Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to give Jane Austen the supreme delight of slicing their heads off." |
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Guardian Unlimited Books
Features information about the writer (her influences were Samuel Johnson, Fanny Burney, and Maria Edgeworth), a small selection of critical commentary, and reviews of recent Austen biographies.
"We are used to revisionism in biography and tend to equate it with progress towards truth. What is fascinating about the two latest biographies of Jane Austen, by Claire Tomalin and David Nokes, is that they seem to be revising in concert, using just the same material, and come to pretty much the same general conclusions, but their emphases and subtler interpretations are remarkably unalike." |  | Literary Encyclopedia
Find a well-researched biography and analysis of Emma, with future essays promised for Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility. Also offers a bibliography of books on Austen, including biographies, critical analysis, and historical studies.
"Austen's narrow concern with domestic life sets radical limits on what her novels can explore, but it is this narrowness which now seems most typical: where eighteenth-century novels had often followed the adventures of picaresque rogues and her own contemporaries had sought the historically significant — what Scott called "the big bow-wow" — or the bizarre and horrific, Austen brought high intelligence and moral realism to apparently banal middle-class life. Her kind of discriminating observation was to become the ground of most valuable novel writing in the twentieth-century, the other currents feeding adventure and escapist fiction." | | Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database (New York University)
Offers synopses and commentary from a medical perspective on Emma, Persuasion, and Sense and Sensibility.
"In Emma, as is not uncommon in Austen, illness both defines characters and drives the plot. Mr. Woodhouse provides a classic portrait of the hypochondriac and a humorous glimpse into the overwrought fears about ordinary life -- drafts, gruel, journeys -- for such a man. Although Austen mocks Emma's overconfident machinations in other matters, she also offers a realistic picture of the loving patience Emma must draw upon in managing her anxious, often difficult father, a subplot that suggests the challenges many daughters face in caring for elderly, ailing parents at home." | | The Republic of Pemberley
Extensive collection of resources. Includes an Austen biography, literary criticism and analysis, background information on life in nineteenth century England, selected letters, portraits and illustrations, and excerpts on the author's reputation. The full electronic texts of her novels and short stories, including Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion. | |
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The TinL masthead features photography by
Natasha D'Schommer
, and the book art featured is by Jim Rosenau.
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