A Reading of Jane Austen

193 Pages·2000·9.484 MB·English

by  Barbara Hardy

A READING OF JANE AUSTEN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Novels of George Eliot (Athlone Press)
The Appropriate form: An Essay on the Novel (Athlone Press)
The Moral Art of Dickens (Athlone Press)
The Exposure of Luxury: Radical Themes in Thackeray (Peter Owen)
Tellers and Listeners: The Narrative Imagination (Athlone Press)
The Advantage of Lyric: Essays on Feeling in Poetry (Athlone Press)
A READING OF
Jane Au£ten
Barbara Hardy
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
THE ATHLONE PRESS
1979
Published by
THE ATHLONE PRESS
UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
at 4 Gower Street, London WC1
Distributed by Tiptree Book Services Ltd
Tiptree, Essex
First edition (Peter Owen Ltd) 1975
First paperback edition,
with corrections (Athtone Press) 1979
© Barbara Hardy 1975, 1979
ISBN 0485 12032 1
Reprinted by photolitho by
WHITSTABLE LITHO LTD
Whitstable, Kent
TO BETTY
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
I The Flexible Medium 11
II The Feelings and the Passions 37
III The Storytellers 1: Continuity, Climax and
Conclusion 66
IV The Storytellers 2: Imagination and Memory 83
V Social Groups 103
VI Properties and Possessions 136
VII A Sense of the Author 166
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to Jean Elliott and Barbara Pinsker for their
generous work on a difficult manuscript. Jean Elliott also gave
valuable advice and criticism. I must also thank Alasdair Aston for
his suggestions. I am indebted to students at Royal Holloway Coll-
ege, and Birkbeck College, for their listening and talking over the
past ten years. Veronica Wilson-Tagoe will find traces of conversa-
tions we had while she was working on her M.Phil, thesis. I have
profited from agreements and disagreements with many Jane
Austen scholars, but am particularly indebted to the work of R. W.
Chapman, Brian Southam, Mary Lascelles, Howard Babb, A.
Walton Litz, and Stuart Tave.
This book is a study of Jane Austen's major novels, and does not
include a discussion of the juvenilia or the unfinished works.
B.H.