Jane Austen

Devoted fans and scholars of Jane Austen―as well as skeptics―will rejoice at Tony Tanner’s superb book on the incomparable novelist. Distilling twenty years of thinking and writing about Austen, Tanner treats in fresh and illuminating ways the questions that have always occupied her most perceptive critics. How can we reconcile the limited social world of her novels with the largeness of her vision? How does she deal with depicting a once-stable society that was changing alarmingly during her lifetime? How does she express and control the sexuality and violence beneath the well-mannered surface of her milieu? How does she resolve the problems of communication among characters pinioned by social reticences?Tanner guides us through Austen’s novels from relatively sunny early works to the darker, more pessimistic Persuasion and fragmentary Sanditon ―a journey that takes her from acceptance of a society maintained by landed property, family, money, and strict propriety through an insistence on the need for authentication of these values to a final skepticism and even rejection. In showing her progress from a parochial optimism to an ability to encompass her whole society, Tanner renews our sense of Jane Austen as one of the great novelists, confirming both her local and abiding relevance. Tony Tanner's classic text on Jane Austen addresses the issues that have always occupied the author's most perceptive critics, and offers an illuminating and refreshing analysis of Austen's novels. Tanner shows how Austen changed from a basically accepting view of 'society' to a more questioning one and considers the problems of authority, power and the position of women, as well as the relationship between ethics, language and behaviour. This reissued edition features a new Preface by leading Romantic scholar Marilyn Gaull who examines Tanner's background and places the original work in context. Lively and informative, the Preface helps to reinforce and explain the continued importance of Tanner's work. Accompanied by an insightful Note on the Text by Austen scholar John Wiltshire, and an expanded Bibliography and Index, this is a timely republication of a study which is now regarded as one of the finest, and most accessible, introductions to a great novelist. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-42 Anger in the Abbey: Northanger Abbey....Pages 43-74 Secrecy and Sickness: Sense and Sensibility....Pages 75-102 Knowledge and Opinion: Pride and Prejudice....Pages 103-141 The Quiet Thing: Mansfield Park....Pages 142-175 The Match-Maker: Emma....Pages 176-207 In Between: Persuasion....Pages 208-249 The Disease of Activity: Sanditon....Pages 250-285 Back Matter....Pages 286-291 Tanner ... demonstrates the value of close reading ... he can see what has rarely been noticed.' Bruce Stovel, The International Fiction Review ' ... characteristically witty and effective ... offers fascinating and occasionally brilliant readings of some of the finest novels in English.' Carolyn Wilkerson Bell, Magill's Literary Annual 1987