#AUSTEN_Jane

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Regency Buck

Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck

(England, 1810s: dislike turns to love in Regency high society; will he tame her or will she tame him?)

20th-Century Romance

Caroline Fireside, Goodbye Again  (will heroine sacrifice glamorous film career for love?)

M.M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions  (love across the races in dying days of British Raj in India)

Margaret Pemberton, Never Leave Me  (successful Californian looks back on doomed wartime love-affair with German officer, when she works for France Resistance)

Erich Segal, Love Story  (two college students fall idyllically, tragically, in love)

Comedy of Manners

Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head  (sexual merry-go-round in "swinging" 1960s London)

P.G. Wodehouse, Bill the Conqueror  (Percy Pilbeam"s havoc-strewn career as editor of "Society Spice")

Henry Fielding, Tom Jones  (escapades of foundling wandering 18th-century England to find truth about himself)

Mary Wesley, The Vacillations of Poppy Carewe  (rich heiress reviews young men in her life to find the "best" - i.e. the least obviously eligible - husband. Love intervenes)

Period Romance

Kathleen Winsor, Forever Amber  (love and adventure in 17th-century, Restoration England)

Rosalind Laker, What the Heart Keeps  (two immigrants in 1900s USA fall in love, make life together in Wild West and early Hollywood)

Norah Lofts, The Brittle Glass  (independent girl grows up in 18th-century Fens, a place of smugglers, gipsies and highwaymen)

T.N. Murari, Taj  (love of Indian Shah Jahan and his wife, for whom he built the Taj Mahal)

Regency England

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility  (love-affairs of two sisters: sensible Elinor and impulsive, romantic Marianne)

Joan Aiken, Mansfield Revisited  (spirited girl "tames" brother-in-law"s snobbish family)

Clare Darcy, Elyza  (plain girl disguises herself as boy to find romance)

Caroline Courtney, Duchess in Disguise  (spurned wife disguises herself to win husband"s love)

Romantic Mystery

Helen MacInnes, Ride a Pale Horse  (US journalist at Prague conference approached by would-be defector)

Anne Bridge, The Ginger Griffin  (intrigue and unhappiness in pre-Revolutionary China)

Mary Stewart, Nine Coaches Waiting  (English governess in France, caught in family feud, saves charges from death, finds love)

Jane Aiken Hodge, Polonaise  (love and politics in 1810s Poland, caught between Russia and Napoleon)

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AUSTEN, Jane

British novelist (1775-1817)

Austen loved the theatre, and the nearest equivalents to her novels, for pace and verve, are the social comedies of such writers as Sheridan or Goldsmith. The kind of novels popular at the time were epic panoramas (like those of Sir Walter Scott), showing the human race strutting and swaggering amid stormy weather in vast, romantic landscapes. Austen preferred a narrower focus, concentrating on a handful of people busy about their own domestic concerns. Her books are about the bonds which draw families together and the ambitions and feelings (usually caused by grown-up children seeking marriage partners) which divide them. Her plots fall into ‘acts’, like plays, and her dialogue is as precise and witty as in any comedy of the time. But she offers a delight available to no playwright: that of the author’s own voice, setting the scene, commenting on and shaping events. She is like a bright-eyed, sharp-tongued relative sitting in a corner of the room watching the rest of the family bustle.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE  (1813) Genteel Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five grown-up daughters are thrown into confusion when two rich, marriageable young men come to live in the neighbourhood. The comedy of the story comes from Mrs Bennet’s mother-hen-like attempts at matchmaking, and the way fate and the young people’s own inclinations make things turn out entirely differently from her plans. The more serious sections of the novel show the developing relationship between Elizabeth Bennet, the second daughter, and cold, proud Mr Darcy. Although secondary characters (henpecked Mr Bennet, snobbish Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Elizabeth’s romantic younger sister Lydia, the dashing army officer Wickham and the toady Mr Collins) steal the limelight whenever they appear, the book hinges on half a dozen magnificent set-piece scenes between Elizabeth and Darcy, the two headstrong young people the reader longs to see realizing their love for one another and falling into one another’s arms.

Austen’s completed novels are: Northanger Abbey (a spoof of romantic melodrama, unlike any of her other books), Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. She also left a number of unfinished works, including The Watsons (completed by Joan Aiken) and Sanditon (finished by Marie Dobbs).

READ ON

Emma (about a young woman so eager to manage other people’s lives that she fails, for a long time, to realize where her own true happiness lies)

Mansfield Park (a darker comedy about a girl brought up by a rich, charming family who is at first dazzled by their easy brilliance, then comes to see that they are selfish and foolish, and finally, by unassuming persistence, wins through to the happiness we have hoped for her) see also pathway

To Pride and Prejudice : Mrs Gaskell, Wives and Daughters Emma Tennant, Pemberley (ripely romantic sequel, not terribly Austenish but fun for Elizabeth/Darcy lover)

To Mansfield Park : Joan Aiken, Mansfield Revisited - the best of many attempts to use Austen's characters and equal Austen's style

To Austen's work in general : Anton Chekhov, Short Stories E.M. Forster, A Room with a View Alison Lurie, Only Children Katherine Mansfield, Short Stories William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

The 'taming' aspect of Austen's plots has inspired a library of lighter fiction by others. The best by far -- on occasion (eg in Regency Buck or The Grand Sophy) rivalling Austen's books themselves - are: Georgette Heyer, Regency Romances

 more :Tags  Pathways  Themes & Places

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Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

(social comedy in Regency England: choosing marriage-partners)

Comedy of Manners

Mary McCarthy, Birds of America  (likeable 1960s young American dismayed by Europe)

H.G. Wells, Kipps  (personable young man makes his way in 1910s London society)

P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters  (problems in idyllic 1920s English country house? Ring for Jeeves ...)

Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers  (marriage and career-machinations in 19th-century English cathedral city)

Romance

Catherine Cookson, The Parson"s Daughter  (spirited girl "tames" philandering husband in 19th-century English town)

Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds  (Australian outback: will hero put priestly vocation before earthly love?)

Georgette Heyer, Regency Buck  (England, 1810s: dislike turns to love in Regency high society; will he tame her or will she tame him?)

Baroness Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel  (languid English milord is really romantic hero of French revolution)

Stylish, Beady-Eyed Satire

Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings  (gossip and foolishness in 1950s London high Anglican parish)

Mrs Gaskell, Cranford  (gossip and intrigue in small 1830s English town)

Robertson Davies, A Mixture of Frailties  (intrigue and the arts in small 1950s Canadian town)

Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs  (Americans in 1970s Englan cling to each other for comfort and affection)

"Taming" or "Being Tamed"

Miles Franklin, My Brilliant Career  (young Australian, 1910s, preys on follies of European bourgeoisie)

Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country  (social comedy, New York 1910s: young people prey on foolish elders)

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair  (social comedy; girls conforming with or rebelling against society)