JANE AUSTEN
Jane Austen by Cassandra Austen 1870, Engraving by Lizars, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Jane Austen Bibliography
Dates: 1775-1817
Nationality: British/English
Literary Periods:
Eighteenth Century, 1700-1799
Nineteenth Century, 1800-1899
Romantic Period, 1780-1837
Literary Movements:
Romanticism 1780-1837
WHAT DID JANE READ?
Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time (1999) by
This book presents Jane Austen as a radical innovator. It explores the nature of her confrontation with the popular novelists of her time, and demonstrates how her challenge to them transformed fiction. It is evident from letters and other sources, as well as the novels themselves, that the Austen family developed a strong scepticism about contemporary notions of the proper content and purpose of fiction. Austen's own writing can be seen as a conscious demonstration of these disagreements. In thus identifying her literary motivation, this book (moving away from the questions of ideology which have so dominated Austen studies in this century) offers a unifying critique of the novels and helps to explain their unequalled durability with the reading public.
Call Number: Miller PR4037 .W29 1999ISBN: 0521651301
Jane Austen's Art of Memory (1989) by
Jane Austen's Art of Memory offers a radical new thesis about Jane Austen's construction of her art. It argues that, with the help of her tenacious memory, she engaged in friendly dialogue with her predecessors, the English writers, a process that the eighteenth century called 'imitation'. Her allusions, far from being random, thicken and complicate her novels in a manner that is poetic rather than mimetic. Difficult critical cruxes resolve when her books are set within her own great tradition which included Locke, Richardson, Milton, Shakespeare, and (unexpectedly) Chaucer, and she is found to be an educated and supremely conscious writer.
Call Number: Miller: PR4038.L5 H37 1989ISBN: 0521363918
AUSTEN ON FILM
Pride and Prejudice (2005)
DVD PN1995.9 .M27 P7534 2006
Emma (1996)
DVD PN1997 .E622 1999
Pride and Prejudice (1995)
DVD PR4034 .P75 2001 v.1-2
Sense and Sensibility (1995)
DVD PR4034 .S42 1999
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
DVD PN1995.9 .M27 P753 2006
Books about Austen on film...
Recreating Jane Austen (2001) by
Recreating Jane Austen is a book for readers who know and love Austen's work. Stimulated by the recent crop of film and television versions of Austen's novels, John Wiltshire examines how they have been transposed and 'recreated' in another age and medium. Wiltshire illuminates the process of 'recreation' through the work of the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, and offers Jane Austen's own relation to Shakespeare as a suggestive parallel. Exploring the romantic impulse in Austenian biography, 'Jane Austen' as a commodity, and offering a re-interpretation of Pride and Prejudice, this book approaches the central question of the role Jane Austen plays in the contemporary cultural imagination.
Call Number: E-BookISBN: 0521802466
Jane Austen on Screen (2003) by
Jane Austen on Screen is a collection of essays exploring the literary and cinematic implications of translating Austen's prose into film. Contributors raise questions of how prose fiction and cinema differ, of how mass commercial audiences require changes to script and character, and of how continually remade films evoke memories of earlier productions. The essays represent widely divergent perspectives, from literary 'purists' suspicious of filmic renderings of Austen to film-makers who see the text as a stimulus for producing exceptional cinema. Theoretical issues are explored in balance with the practical concerns of literature-to-film conversions: casting choices, authenticity of settings, script 'amputations' of the original prose, anachronisms, relevance for modern mass audiences, and the intertextuality informing the production of much-remade works. This comprehensive study, including an exhaustive Austen bibliography and filmography, will be of interest to students and teachers alike.
Call Number: PN1995 .C343 1999 Colby Miller 1st Floor Bookstacks 3 (S3)ISBN: 0521793254
Jane Austen in Hollywood (2000) by
In 1995 and 1996 six film or television adaptations of Jane Austen's novels were produced -- an unprecedented number. More amazing, all were critical and/or box office successes. What accounts for this explosion of interest? Much of the appeal of these films lies in our nostalgic desire at the end of the millennium for an age of greater politeness and sexual reticence. Austen's ridicule of deceit and pretentiousness also appeals to our fin de siècle sensibilities. The novels were changed, however, to enhance their appeal to a wide popular audience, and the revisions reveal much about our own culture and its values. These recent productions espouse explicitly twentieth-century feminist notions and reshape the Austenian hero to make him conform to modern expectations. Linda Troost and Sayre Greenfield present fourteen essays examining the phenomenon of Jane Austen as cultural icon, providing thoughtful and sympathetic insights on the films through a variety of critical approaches. The contributors debate whether these productions enhance or undercut the subtle feminism that Austen promoted in her novels. From Persuasion to Pride and Prejudice, from the three Emmas (including Clueless ) to Sense and Sensibility, these films succeed because they flatter our intelligence and education. And they have as much to tell us about ourselves as they do about the world of Jane Austen. This second edition includes a new chapter on the recent film version of Mansfield Park.
Call Number: Miller PR4038.F55 J36 2001ISBN: 0813190061
MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM EXHIBITION
The Divine Jane was commissioned for the Morgan Library & Museum exhibition, A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy, which examines the influence of Austen's fiction through interviews with leading writers, scholars, and actors.
REFERENCE & BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Scribner Writers Series [Database]
Essay on the life and works of Jane Austen, complete works and suggested reading bibliographies
- Literary Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window A literary reference work written by specialists from universities around the world, providing articles on authors, works, and literary and historical topics.
- Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window A database of English-language literature, containing thousands of full-text works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, as well as journals, author biographies, bibliographies, criticism, and reference resources.
A Chronology of Jane Austen and Her Family (2006) by
For more than thirty years Deirdre Le Faye, one of the world's leading authorities on Jane Austen, has been gathering and organising every single piece of information available about the Austen family before, during and after Jane's lifetime. Her unique chronology, containing some ten thousand entries, is now available in paperback. For the first time, those interested in Jane Austen can discover where she was and what she was doing at many precise moments of her life. The entries, many taken from hitherto unexplored and unpublished documents, are presented in a clear and readable form and each item of information is linked to its source. The volume includes family trees for the extended Austen and Knight families from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. This is a key work of reference that every scholar and reader of Austen will find fascinating and indispensable.
Call Number: Miller PR4036 .L42 2006ISBN: 9780521810647
Jane Austen in Context (2005) by
This collection of essays covering many aspects of Austen's life, works and historical context provides the fullest introduction in one volume to the life and times of Jane Austen. Jane Austen in Context is a generously illustrated collection of short, lively contributions arranged alphabetically, and covering topics from biography to portraits and agriculture to transport. An essay on the reception of Austen's work is also included, showing how criticism of Austen has responded to literary movements and fashions. The volume emphasises the subtle interactions between Austen's life and times and her novels. This is a work of reference that readers and scholars of Austen will turn to again and again.
Call Number: Miller PR4036 .A283 2005ISBN: 0521826446
A Jane Austen Encyclopedia (1998) by
Perhaps the first modern novelist, Jane Austen (1775-1817) has left an indelible mark on the world of letters. She is best known as the author of penetrating studies of domestic life and manners, and her novels such as Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Mansfield Park (1814) continue to be read and appreciated today. Yet Austen also wrote numerous other pieces and a substantial body of letters. While her novels have received large amounts of critical attention, scholars have also increasingly studied her other writings, and Austen scholarship continues to grow each year. This reference book is an accurate, comprehensive, and detailed guide to her life and career. A chronology outlines the principal events in her life and places her within larger literary and historical contexts. The several hundred alphabetically arranged entries that follow identify characters and family members, discuss works and themes, and synthesize the large body of criticism that has grown around her works. Every one of her texts, including all of her minor writings, has a separate entry, as have most of her fictional characters. Entries for individual works typically provide details of composition and publication, a plot summary and critical commentary, a list of characters, and bibliographical references. The volume closes with an extensive bibliography of works by and about her.
Call Number: Miller PR4036 .A28 1998ISBN: 0313300178
The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen (2010) by
Jane Austen's stock in the popular marketplace has never been higher, while academic studies continue to uncover new aspects of her engagement with her world. This fully updated edition of the acclaimed Cambridge Companion offers clear, accessible coverage of the intricacies of Austen's works in their historical context, with biographical information and suggestions for further reading. Major scholars address Austen's six novels, the letters and other works, in terms accessible to students and the many general readers, as well as to academics. With seven new essays, the Companion now covers topics that have become central to recent Austen studies, for example, gender, sociability, economics, and the increasing number of screen adaptations of the novels.
Call Number: Miller PR4036 .C3 2011ISBN: 9780521763080
A Companion to Jane Austen Studies (2000) by
Jane Austen significantly shaped the development of the English novel, and her works continue to be read widely today. Though she is best known for her novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, she also wrote poems, letters, prayers and various pieces of juvenalia. These writings have been attracting the attention of scholars; her major works have already generated a large body of scholarly and critical studies. This reference is a guide to her works and the response to them. Austen's works are fraught with ambiguity. Because she was adept at displaying numerous aspects of an issue, her writings invite multiple interpretations. In light of the ambiguity of her texts, each of her major works is approached from a reader-response perspective, in which an expert contributor illuminates the reader's relationship to her writing. And because so many readers have had such varied responses to her novels, the volume also includes chapters summarizing the critical response to each of her major works. In addition, the book includes separate chapters on her poems, letters, and prayers.
Call Number: E-BookISBN: 0313306621
RESEARCH & CRITICISM
Books, essays, and journal articles indexed in MLA International Bibliography 
[Database]
MLA International Bibliography is the definitive literary research database, indexing the most authoritative Austen scholarship published in books and academic journals.
MLA indexes and links to the entire JSTOR literary research collection as well as linking to many other full-text providers and the Colby College Libraries catalog. If you discover books or articles through MLA that are not available at Colby or through our lending partners, please request these items using your ILLiad Account.
You'll also want to check out...
Women Reviewing Women in Nineteenth-Century Britain (2010) by
Giving special attention to critical reception of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bront1/2, and George Eliot, Joanne Wilkes offers in-depth examinations of reviews by eight female critics: Maria Jane Jewsbury, Sara Coleridge, Hannah Lawrance, Jane Williams, Julia Kavanagh, Anne Mozley, Margaret Oliphant, and Mary Augusta Ward. What they wrote about women writers, and what their writings tell us about the critics' sense of themselves, reveals the distinctive character of nineteenth-century women's contributions to literary history.
Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9780754698579
Jane Austen (2011) by
Among the most important English novelists, Jane Austen is unusual because she is esteemed not only by academics but by the reading public. Her novels continue to sell well, and films adapted from her works enjoy strong box-officesuccess. The trajectory of Austen criticism is intriguing, especially when one compares it to that of other nineteenth-century English writers. At least partly because she was a woman in the early nineteenth century, she was longneglected by critics, hardly considered a major figure in English literature until well into the twentieth century, a hundred years after her death. Yet consequently she did not suffer from the reaction against Victorianism thatdid so much to hurt the reputation of Dickens, Tennyson, Arnold, and others. How she rose to prominence among academic critics - and has retained her position through the constant shifting of academic and critical trends - is a story worth telling, as it suggests not only something about Austen's artistry but also about how changes in critical perspective can radically alter a writer's reputation. Laurence W. Mazzeno is President Emeritus of Alvernia University, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Call Number: Bates PR4037 .M34 2011ISBN: 9781571133946
Jane Austen and Company (2011) by
Here we come to know Jane Austen by the company she keeps: her predecessors Fielding, Sterne, Lennox, and Burney, her contemporary Scott, and her successors Waugh and Amis-comic novelists all. And comedy is the connection between these twelve elegant essays by the distinguished academic Bruce Stovel, who most lovingly engages Austen herself through his studies of her comic novels, her art of conversation, her pleasure principle, and her prayers. Edited by Nora Foster Stovel, the collection includes an introduction by Juliet McMaster and an afterword by Isobel Grundy.
Call Number: Miller PR4037 .S76 2011ISBN: 9780888645487
Why Jane Austen? (2011) by
From the first publication of Pride and Prejudice to recent film versions of her life and work, Jane Austen has continued to provoke controversy and inspire fantasies of peculiar intimacy. Whether celebrated for her realism, proto-feminism, or patrician gentility, imagined as a subversive or a political conservative, Austen generates passions shaped by the ideologies and trends of her readers' time--and by her own memorable stories, characters, and elusive narrative cool. In this book, Rachel M. Brownstein considers constructions of Jane Austen as a heroine, moralist, satirist, romantic, woman, and author and the changing notions of these categories. She finds echoes of Austen's insights and techniques in contemporary Jane-o-mania, the commercially driven, erotically charged popular vogue that aims paradoxically to preserve and liberate, to correct and collaborate with old Jane. Brownstein's brilliant discussion of the distinctiveness and distinction of Austen's genius clarifies the reasons why we read the novelist-or why we should read her-and reorients the prevailing view of her work. Reclaiming the rich comedy of Austen while constructing a new narrative of authorship, Brownstein unpacks the author's fascinating entanglement with readers and other admirers.
Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9780231153904
Jane Austen - Sense and Sensibility/ Pride and Prejudice/ Emma (2017) by
This Guide discusses the range of critical reactions to three of Jane Austen's most widely-studied and popular novels. Annika Bautz takes the reader chronologically through the profusion of criticism by selecting key approaches from the immense variety of responses these three Austen novels have provoked over the last two centuries.
Call Number: Bates PR4037 .B378 2010ISBN: 9780230517127
Jane Austen (1997) by
Here, firmly rooted in her own social setting for the first time, is the real Jane Austen--the shy woman willing to challenge convention, the woman of no pretensions who nevertheless called herself "formidable," a woman who could be frivolous and yet suffer from black depressions, who showed unfailing loyalty and, in the conduct of her own life, unfailing bravery. In an act of understanding and brilliant synthesis, Claire Tomalin reveals Jane Austen with a clarity never before achieved, one which makes us look upon her novels with fresh and even greater admiration. The world she wrote about--that place of civility and reassuring stability--was never quite her own. As Tomalin shows, Jane Austen's family existed on the very fringe of the world she described in her fiction, struggling to get ahead with little money and no land in the competitive society of Georgian England, sometimes succeeding but often failing with painful consequences. New research in family papers has yielded a rich, tragicomic picture of the Austen clan--their ambitions, their matrimonial alliances, their exotic connections with India and France. At the same time, Tomalin's explorations in local archives reveal a surprising view of the neighbors the family lived among in Hampshire, more extravagant and eccentric by far than anyone depicted in Austen's books. We realize how much closer her genius lies, in its splendid artifice, to the great comic operas of Mozart than to the main tradition of the English novel. But it is in the deeply human portrait of Jane Austen herself that this biography excels. The honesty and directness of her personality (perfect heroines made her "sick and wicked"), her strength in giving up a chance at marriage to follow the path her vocation as a writer required her to take, the warmth and long consistency of her relationship with her sister, Cassandra, the poignancy of her death--Claire Tomalin here captures, with unforgettable skill, the living character of a great writer who is read, reread, read again, and adored, now more than ever.
Call Number: Miller PR4036 .T66 1997ISBN: 0679446281
PRIMARY SOURCES
The Complete Works and Letters of Jane Austen [Database]
The Complete Works and Letters of Jane Austen contains the Oxford University Press edition of The Novels of Jane Austen; Jane Austen’s Letters, collected and edited by Deirdre Le Faye; and A Memoir of Jane Austen, and other family recollections by J. E. Austen-Leigh, edited with an introduction and notes by Kathryn Sutherland.
WEB
- Romantic Circles [WEB]"Romantic Circles is a refereed scholarly Website devoted to the study of Romantic-period literature and culture. It is published by the University of Maryland and supported, in part, by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), and the English Departments of Loyola University of Chicago and the University of Maryland."