Jane Austen

Juliet McMaster

Reka Serfozo

This new collection of Austen's brilliant short fiction is the first annotated edition of her short writings. The texts have been compared with the manuscripts to give a number of new readings. In addition to prose fiction and prayers, this collection contains many of her poems written to amuse and console her friends, and are unavailable in any other single volume. About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Catharine, Or, The Bower

In her lively and accessibly written book, Juliet McMaster examines Jane Austen’s acute and frequently uproarious juvenile works as important in their own right and for the ways they look forward to her novels. Exploring the early works both collectively and individually, McMaster shows how young Austen’s fictional world, peopled by guzzlers and unashamed self-seekers, operates by an ethic of energy rather than the sympathy that dominates the novels. A fully self-conscious artist, young Jane experimented freely with literary modes - the epistolary, the omniscient, the drama. Early on, she developed brilliantly pointed dialogue to match her characters. Literary parody impels her creativity, and McMaster’s sustained study of Love and Friendship shows the same intricate relation of the parody to the work it parodies that we later see with Northanger Abbey and the Gothic novel. As an illustrator herself, McMaster is especially attuned to the explicit and sometimes hilarious descriptions of bodies that preceded Austen’s famous reticence about physicality. Rather than focusing on the immaturities of the juvenilia, McMaster maps the gradual shifts in tone and emphasis that signpost Austen’s journey as a writer. She shows, for instance, how the shameless husband-hunting in The Three Sisters and the vigorous partisanship of The History of England lead on to Pride and Prejudice. Her book will appeal to Austen’s critics and to passionate general readers, as well as to scholars working in the fields of juvenilia, children’s literature, and childhood studies.

Jane Austen, Young Author

Though his father had faced bankruptcy, James Clarke Hook (1819–1907) nevertheless managed to paint himself into country-gentlemanhood, becoming famous for his landscapes of British coastal scenes and his ability to evoke not just the sights but also the sounds and even the smell of the sea. James Clarke Hook, Juliet McMaster’s lively biography of the brilliant but underappreciated Victorian painter, brings the reader through Hook’s rigorous training at the Royal Academy Schools, his travelling studentship in Florence and Venice, and his work as a historical painter, to the discovery of his métier as a painter of contemporary rural and coastal scenes. Part of the secret of Hook’s success was his resolution to paint the final large canvas of his seascapes onsite, braving wind and weather – for which he invented an easel that was adaptable to uneven terrain. McMaster’s research led her to retrace the painter’s footsteps to the rocky headlands and sheltered bays where, over a hundred years ago, Hook had set up his easel to capture the tang of sea. McMaster connects Hook, an academician for half a century, with the major figures and movements of Victorian art – including the Pre-Raphaelites John Everett Millais and Holman Hunt, the etcher Samuel Palmer, and the painter and sculptor G.F. Watts. James Clarke Hook worked alongside the fishermen and rural families who populate and enliven his canvases; this book reinvigorates our understanding of his artistic process and unique sense of place.

Painter of the Sea

James Clarke Hook

Papers delivered at the Jane Austen Bicentennial Conference at the University of Alberta

Jane Austen’s Achievement

Dickens the Designer

"Even many of her admirers are ready to admit that though she is a great novelist, it is not to Jane Austen that we should go if we want to be deeply moved: she is great for other reasons. I am ready to admit numbers of reasons for which she is a great novelist; but I find no need to apologize for her in the area of her main concern. My contention is that her subject was love, and she knew her subject." (from the Foreword)

Jane Austen on Love

Edward Copeland

A fully updated edition with seven brand new essays.

The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen

Christine Alexander

A collection of essays on the juvenilia of famous authors including Austen, the Brontës, George Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf

Jane Austen's stock in the popular marketplace has never been higher, while academic studies continue to uncover new aspects of her engagement with her world. This fully updated edition of the acclaimed Cambridge Companion offers clear, accessible coverage of the intricacies of Austen's works in their historical context, with biographical information and suggestions for further reading. Major scholars address Austen's six novels, the letters and other works, in terms accessible to students and the many general readers, as well as to academics. With seven new essays, the Companion now covers topics that have become central to recent Austen studies, for example, gender, sociability, economics, and the increasing number of screen adaptations of the novels.

Juliet McMaster

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