30 Great Myths About Jane Austen

A fascinating look into the myths that continue to shape our understanding and appreciation of Jane Austen.

Was Jane Austen the best-selling novelist of her time? Are all her novels romances? Did they depict the traditional world of the aristocracy? Is Austen's writing easy to understand? Well into the 21st century, Jane Austen continues to be one of the most compelling novelists in all English literature. Many of her ideas about class, family, history, intimacy, manners, love, desire, and society, have inspired "myths" that are often contradictory — she was a Tory who was also a liberal feminist, or, her novels are at once sharply satirical and unapologetically romantic. Myths, like Austen's works, are dynamic, changing over time and impacting how we read and interpret literature.

30 Great Myths about Jane Austen examines the accepted beliefs — both true and untrue —that have most influenced our readings of Austen. Rather than simply de-bunking, or validating, commonly-held views about Austen, authors Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite explore how these myths can be used to engage with the life, work, and reception of Jane Austen. Applying the most up-to-date scholarship to better understand how myths shape our appreciation of Jane Austen, this fascinating volume:

• Introduces readers to the history of Austen reception, both in academic scholarship and in the general public
• Examines Jane Austen’s life and letters, her historical contexts, her texts, and their afterlives
• Discusses Austen’s influence on the development of literary criticism as a discipline Explores each of Austen’s main novels, as well as relatively obscure texts such as Sanditon and The Watsons

Offering engaging narrative and original insights, 30 Great Myths about Jane Austen is a must-read for scholars, instructors, and students of English and Romantic literature, as well as general readers with interest in the life and works of Jane Austen.

Claudia L. Johnson is the Murray Professor of English at Princeton University. She specializes in Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth-Century British literature, and gender studies. Renowned for her works on Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft, Johnson's books include Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel; Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender and Sentimentality in the 1790s; and Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures, which won the Christian Gauss Award.

Clara Tuite is Professor of English at the University of Melbourne, a Co-Director of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Contemporary Culture Research Unit, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her books include Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon and Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity, which was awarded the Elma Dangerfield Prize by the International Association of Byron Societies.

JA was not interested in Fame:  2, 530

There is no sex in Jane Austen’s novels 2, 813

Jane Austen Wrote on Little Bits of Ivory 1, 615

Jane Austen’s Juvenilia are scraps which she outgrew 2, 998

Jane Austen’s novels are naturalistic:  2, 576

Jane Austen was unconscious of her art 2, 846

Northanger Abbey is a minor novel that spoofs Gothic fiction 2, 285

The Bath Jane Austen knew and loathed 2, 693

Jane Austen’s writing is easy to understand 2, 129

Sense and Sensibility is a Satire on Sensibility 2, 246

Jane Austen was the best-selling author of her time 2, 336

Regency Austen  2, 600

Only women read Jane Austen 1, 915

As Pride and Prejudice shows, all Austen’s novels are love stories 2, 524

Jane Austen never mentions the war 2, 718

Something happened to Jane Austen when she wrote Mansfield Park 2, 475

Jane Austen disapproved of the theatre 2, 522

Jane Austen was a Christian Moralist 2, 500

In Emma, Jane Austen created a heroine no-one but an author would love 3, 084

Jane Austen and the Amorous Effects of Brass 2, 329

Persuasion is an autumnal novel 2, 677

Jane Austen was a Feminist/Jane Austen was not a Feminist 2, 382

Jane Austen’s letters are mean and trivial 2, 934

Jane Austen was anonymous 1, 993

Jane Austen depicts the traditional world of the aristocracy 3, 126

Jane Austen was a comic novelist 2, 317

Jane Austen’s novels are about good manners 2, 104

Jane Austen’s Muslins 2, 707

Jane Austen writes escape fiction 2, 396

JA was a star-crossed lover 2, 634

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