Write a Short Note on the works of Jane Austen

Jane Austen (1775-1815)

• Austen's works critique the sentimental novels of the second half of the 18th century
and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism
• English writer who first gave the novel its distinctly modern character through her
treatment of ordinary people in everyday life.
• Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which
interpret, critique and comment upon the British life at the end of the 18th century
• She vividly depicted English middle-class life during the early 19th century.
• Her novels defined the era’s novel of manners, but they also became timeless classics
that remained critical and popular successes for over two centuries after her death.
• With the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and
Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816), she achieved success as a
published writer. She wrote two other novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both
published posthumously in 1818.
• Austen created the comedy of manners of middle-class life in the England of her time,
revealing the possibilities of “domestic” literature.
• Her repeated fable of a young woman’s voyage to self-discovery on the passage through
love to marriage focuses upon easily recognizable aspects of life.
• It is this concentration upon character and personality and upon the tensions between
her heroines and their society that relates her novels more closely to the modern world
than to the traditions of the 18th century.
• It is this modernity, together with the wit, realism, and timelessness of her prose style,
her shrewd, amused sympathy, and the satisfaction to be found in stories so skillfully
told, in novels so beautifully constructed, that helps to explain her continuing appeal
for readers of all kinds.
• Austen’s range was narrow, and she never ventured beyond her own experiences and
powers.
• Yet she achieved a level of perfection that no other English novelist has achieved.
• Her books are composed of the most commonplace materials, and are wholly lacking
in all the elements of great passion and strong action.
• Her humour was subtle and here characterisation was so life like.

Define Domestic Novel.

• A Domestic Novel is a type of fiction that was prevalent in the early-to-mid-nineteenth
century, and was primarily read by women. The Domestic Novel has certain defining
characteristics, among which are:
• Time period: domestic novels or domestic fiction generally date from the 1820s to the
1860s;
• Focusing on a particular type of heroine; specifically, either the angel or the practical
woman. This heroine is frequently contrasted with an incompetent or cowardly woman,
or with an ignorant beauty;
• The novel documents the heroine's struggle for self-mastery, particularly in relation to
her emotions and desires; the heroine is seen as struggling to control her feelings and
her wants;
• She may undergo religious struggles in the submission of her emotions and wants;
• She may suffer abuse by persons in positions of power;
 • She will usually be married by the time the story is ended, either to a "bad" man who
the heroine's virtue has reformed, or to a paragon to whom she has aspired;
• These novels are frequently couched in extremely sentimental language designed to
wring the heartstrings of a female readership.

Write a short note on Historical Romance

Historical romance is a broad category of fiction in which the plot takes place in a setting
located in the past. Walter Scott helped popularize this genre in the early 19th-century, with
works such as Rob Roy and Ivanhoe
Walter Scott was the first great writer to recognize the potential of historical romance as a
“dramatic narration of national history, a modern commercial equivalent of the old national
epic. Scott’s Waverley novels started out as the romance of Scotland, but of a Scotland that
was now part of the United Kingdom, so that the hero was generally a young adventurer from
south of the border. But Scott soon broke with this pattern, and with Ivanhoe (1819), the tenth
in the series, her turned the adventure tale into a ‘foundation epic of England.’”

Who were the women contemporary novelists of Scott’s Time

Scott’s principal contemporaries in prose fiction were three women who worked in modern
social and domestic novel. JANE AUSTEN (1775-1815), MARIA EDGEWORTH (1767-
1849) and SUSAN EDMONSTON FERRIER (1782-1854) were the famous women
contemporary novelists.

Who were the Minor novelists of Scott’s period?

Charles Robert Maturin (1782-1824) Romance of fantasy and horror – Melmoth the Wanderer
Theodore Hook (1788-1841) Produced a string of loosely written novels which today are flat.
John Galt (1779-1841) Showed contemporary Scottish life Ayrshire Legatees, Annals of the
Parish
Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1839) : A Close friend of Shelley, his fiction became the vehicle
of witty satiric commentary upon various things. He is known for his works Headlong Hall,
Melincourt, Nightmare Abbey and Crochet Castle.
George Payne Rainsford James, William Harrison Ainsworth – Writers of Historical Romance.