Jane Austen In A Social Context

A lively illustrated collection of short essays on a wide range of aspects of Austen's life, work and times.

Mansfield Park and Persuasion are both notoriously problematic works that have stimulated diverse and often polarised critical readings. These essays interpret and outline the debate in the light of cultural, historicist and feminist theory.

Previous biographies have set Jane Austen within her social context. This biography places her firmly within her professional context as one of an increasing number of women who published novels between 1790 and 1820. Being a professional writer was, apart from her family, more important to Austen than anything else in her life.

Who owns, who buys, who gives, and who notices objects is always significant in Austen's writing, placing characters socially and characterizing them symbolically. Jane Austen's Possessions and Dispossessions looks at the significance of objects in Austen's major novels, fragments, and juvenilia.