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Title details for Jane Austen, Early and Late by Freya Johnston - Available

Jane Austen, Early and Late

by Freya Johnston
ebook
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A reexamination of Austen's unpublished writings that uncovers their continuity with her celebrated novels—and that challenges distinctions between her "early" and "late" work
Jane Austen's six novels, published toward the end of her short life, represent a body of work that is as brilliant as it is compact. Her earlier writings have routinely been dismissed as mere juvenilia, or stepping stones to mature proficiency and greatness. Austen's first biographer described them as "childish effusions." Was he right to do so? Can the novels be definitively separated from the unpublished works? In Jane Austen, Early and Late, Freya Johnston argues that they cannot.
Examining the three manuscript volumes in which Austen collected her earliest writings, Johnston finds that Austen's regard and affection for them are revealed by her continuing to revisit and revise them throughout her adult life. The teenage works share the milieu and the humour of the novels, while revealing more clearly the sources and influences upon which Austen drew. Johnston upends the conventional narrative, according to which Austen discarded the satire and fantasy of her first writings in favour of the irony and realism of the novels. By demonstrating a stylistic and thematic continuity across the full range of Austen's work, Johnston asks whether it makes sense to speak of an early and a late Austen at all.
Jane Austen, Early and Late offers a new picture of the author in all her complexity and ambiguity, and shows us that it is not necessarily true that early work yields to later, better things.

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Publisher: Princeton University Press

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  • ISBN: 9780691229812
  • File size: 7786 KB
  • Release date: October 12, 2021

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9780691229812
  • File size: 52572 KB
  • Release date: October 12, 2021
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subjects

History Literary Criticism Nonfiction

Languages

English

A reexamination of Austen's unpublished writings that uncovers their continuity with her celebrated novels—and that challenges distinctions between her "early" and "late" work
Jane Austen's six novels, published toward the end of her short life, represent a body of work that is as brilliant as it is compact. Her earlier writings have routinely been dismissed as mere juvenilia, or stepping stones to mature proficiency and greatness. Austen's first biographer described them as "childish effusions." Was he right to do so? Can the novels be definitively separated from the unpublished works? In Jane Austen, Early and Late, Freya Johnston argues that they cannot.
Examining the three manuscript volumes in which Austen collected her earliest writings, Johnston finds that Austen's regard and affection for them are revealed by her continuing to revisit and revise them throughout her adult life. The teenage works share the milieu and the humour of the novels, while revealing more clearly the sources and influences upon which Austen drew. Johnston upends the conventional narrative, according to which Austen discarded the satire and fantasy of her first writings in favour of the irony and realism of the novels. By demonstrating a stylistic and thematic continuity across the full range of Austen's work, Johnston asks whether it makes sense to speak of an early and a late Austen at all.
Jane Austen, Early and Late offers a new picture of the author in all her complexity and ambiguity, and shows us that it is not necessarily true that early work yields to later, better things.

Expand title description text
History Literary Criticism Nonfiction