Jane Austen / Edition 1

by Tony Tanner

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674471740
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1986
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	291
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Tony Tanner was Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Reissued Edition   Marilyn Gaull     viii
Note on the Text   John Wiltshire     xxv
Acknowledgements     xxix
Introduction     1
Jane Austen and the Novel     1
Jane Austen and Society     12
Jane Austen and Education     24
Jane Austen and Language     35
Anger in the Abbey: Northanger Abbey     43
Secrecy and Sickness: Sense and Sensibility     75
Knowledge and Opinion: Pride and Prejudice     103
The Quiet Thing: Mansfield Park     142
The Match-Maker: Emma     176
In Between: Persuasion     208
The Disease of Activity: Sanditon     250
Bibliography     286
Index     291

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Praise for Jane Austen when it first appeared in 1986 :

'...a fine achievement....a book that sometimes provokes but invariably stimulates.' - Peter Kemp, The Independent...'one of the most readable books yet to appear on Jane Austen, as well as the most interesting in itself.' - John Bayley, London Review of Books

'He has a fine eye for the apparently slight detail which can unfurl signification.Tanner makes the reader think anew about Jane Austen and about much else in the light of her writing.' - Gillian Beer, The Times Higher Educational Supplement

Editorial Reviews

Tony Tanner’s Jane Austen is an excellent and informative study—a welcome addition to the library of that General Intelligent Reader in whose existence university presses are committed to believe.

Robert Martin Adams

In a comprehensive volume embracing a lengthy chapter on each of Austen’s six novels, as well as the unfinished fragment Sanditon, and a massive introduction focusing on the works ‘in the relation to problems concerned with society, education, and language’, Tanner reveals a Jane Austen far more subtle, experimental, politically engaged, philosophically aware, and psychoanalytically sophisticated than has hitherto been supposed. On almost every page there is an expected disclosure of meaning.

Times Literary Supplement - Norman Fruman

This is the sort of intelligent study of a single author’s oeuvre that has become uncommon in recent criticism. It is genuinely introductory as well as genuinely searching.

New Republic - David Bromwich

One of the most readable books yet to appear on Jane Austen, as well as the most interesting in itself… It is continuously sensitive to the feel of fictive domesticity, and the potential of a situation in terms of what goes on in modern life, and has gone on in other novels.

London Review of Books - John Bayley

Mr. Tanner has the rare talent of being able to speak simultaneously to the scholar and the general reader… Throughout this book one is aware of a perceptive ‘close reader’ whose understanding of Jane Austen’s works has been deepened and modified not only by constant re-reading of the texts, but by developments in recent critical theory. The result is a continuously interesting and rewarding study that builds on the critical tradition and often extends it in surprising ways.

A. Walton Litz

This is the sort of intelligent study of a single author's oeuvre that has become uncommon in recent criticism. It is genuinely introductory as well as genuinely searching.
— David Bromwich

New Republic

One of the most readable books yet to appear on Jane Austen, as well as the most interesting in itself...It is continuously sensitive to the feel of fictive domesticity, and the potential of a situation in terms of what goes on in modern life, and has gone on in other novels.
— John Bayley

London Review of Books

In a comprehensive volume embracing a lengthy chapter on each of Austen's six novels, as well as the unfinished fragment Sanditon, and a massive introduction focusing on the works 'in the relation to problems concerned with society, education, and language', Tanner reveals a Jane Austen far more subtle, experimental, politically engaged, philosophically aware, and psychoanalytically sophisticated than has hitherto been supposed. On almost every page there is an expected disclosure of meaning.
— Norman Fruman

Times Literary Supplement

Cambridge scholar Tanner sums up two decades of close reading in a series of cogent essays describing Austen's novels in relation to ``society, education, and language.'' Included are revisions of his excellent introductions (for Penguin Books) to Mansfield Park , Sense and Sensibility , and Pride and Prejudice. Much of the commentary is grounded convincingly in traditional interpretation, but Tanner's most intriguing perceptions relate to recent critical speculation, especially in his chapter on Emma Woodhouse as socially ``ec-centric'' and hence in need of community. Recommended for both scholarly and general readers interested in Jane Austen. Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.

Library Journal