San Antonio College Library

For so many of us a Jane Austen novel is much more than the epitome of a great read. It is a delight and a solace, a challenge and a reward, and perhaps even an obsession. For two centuries Austen has enthralled readers. Few other authors can claim as many fans or as much devotion. So why are we so fascinated with her novels? What is it about her prose the has made Jane Austen so universally beloved? In essays culled from the last 100 years of criticism...

"Why is Jane Austen so phenomenally popular? Why do we read Pride and Prejudice again and again? Why do we delight in Emma's mischievous schemes? Why do we care that Anne Elliot of Persuasion suffers? We care because it is our biological destiny to be interested in people and their stories--the human brain is a social brain. And Austen's characters are so believable, that for many of us, they are not just imaginary beings, but friends whom we know...

"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...

Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.

The letters - Minor works - Northanger Abbey - Sense and sensibility - Pride and prejudice - Mansfield Park - Emma - Persuasion.

"A Companion to Jane Austen provides a comprehensive survey of contemporary Austen studies while covering the full breadth of the novelist's work and career. Focusing on changing contexts and cultures of reception, the text provides groundbreaking new interpretations in more than 40 essays by a distinguished ream of influential literary critics and Austen scholars. Sections comprise: The Life and the Texts; Reading the Texts; Literary Genres and Genealogies;...

"What is it about Jane Austen's writing that brings such pleasure? There are good, even great novelists who are not good storytellers, and there are highly gifted storytellers who write thoroughly bad books. Jane Austen was both a very good storyteller and a great novelist. How did she do it? Richard Jenkyns's study delights in Austen's craft, wit, and pathos. His deep reading of the novels illuminates the subtlety, depth, and innovation that lie...

As its title suggests, this study proposes to be experimental in method as well as exhaustive of its subject. It aims at a unified and full reading of a novel, and proposes Jane Austen's Mansfield Park as example. The method, having nothing new in its elements, is to apply a variety of critical approaches instead of choosing one or another of them, for applied in isolation they have led to misunderstandings of the novel. By widening the range of points...