H. J. Jackson— Up to 1860, the career paths of Jane Austen and Mary Brunton were strikingly similar. If Brunton had an advantage in the reviews and reference books, Austen—who after all produced more novels—gradually took the lead in numbers of editions and reprints. Almost exact contemporaries, they both started
Fiona Stafford– When Jane Austen spoke of being “in love with” Clarkson, in a private letter of 1813, she was referring to the indefatigable antislavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson and his splendid History, which charted the progress of the abolitionist movement. Two hundred years later, the name of Clarkson would be
From the popular new series of YouTube vlogs, “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries” to the recent rash of Austen-inspired self-help books, Jane Austen mania shows no sign of slowing down in 2012. In Lives of the Novelists: A History of Fiction in 294 Lives, John Sutherland reflects on why Jane continues to