Jane Austen

 Detached from the period, not a romantic

 Published anonymously, but she is not a timid writer. Anonymity was a regular thing.
Wanting people to find out but not tell them. Many prominent novelist in the entire
Europe were also anonymous
 Her first novel was ‘by a lady’, second was published in ‘by the author of Pride and
Prejudice’. The only thing people knew was Austen was a lady
 She has six brothers. And her brother forced her to publish her name in the first time
in Persuasion. If a reader really wants to find out they can
 Prince Regent was a big fan of her works, even though he wasn’t a great man
 John Murray was the most important publisher in London at that time
 A great period of circles where everyone knows each other: literary, political etc
 Jane Austen was the only important write at this age who doesn’t know any other
writers.
 Modest is a good quality. Austen was a great family that does not intervene her
writing. Her brother was liberal, optimistic. Austen only did breakfast because they
knew she was good at writing and she was special.
 She reads her writing out loud, as entertainment and reads aloud as she composes.
 George Henry Luis wrote about her and said she can be read out loud because every
word is precise and matters
 Walter Scott had a high status in criticism
 What she does in her novels is some inwardness
 She was withdrawn from the people and company. We get Anne’s backstory in
chapter 3.
 You can feel her withdrawnness and outsideness
 These novels celebrate the great qualities in people Austen has met
 A lot of death happens at the edge of the novel, never at the central of the novel
Austen knows about the poetry at her time
 The theme of Lord Byron’s The Giaour is sort of what Captain Bennet reciting about
 Narrative technique, free-indirect style. The blur of Anne’s experience.
 Something mortifying about her self-punishing thoughts.
 The only time we get Wentworth's thoughts I, vii. Most of the times we infer.
 In Bath, when we catch Wentworth only, and austen carefully not gives away his
thoughts.