Jane Austen For Dummies Read Free

This info can be good to know if you’re ever on a quiz show with Austen as a topic!
    Foolish Assumptions
    Every book has a specific audience in mind. In writing this book, I made some assumptions about you — the person holding this book right now (don’t worry; I’m not watching you!)
    You’ve heard of Jane Austen, even if you’ve never read one of her novels.
    You’re a reader of Jane Austen, but want more information about how her life and surroundings influenced her writing.
    You’ve read
Emma
twice but still don’t get why it’s such a big deal to Harriet Smith that Miss Woodhouse (whom Harriet never calls “Emma”) shakes her hand.
    You’re no longer confusing Jane Austen with
Jane Eyre.
    You want to know more about Austen but want to find a lot of information in one reasonably priced and readable book.
    You’ve seen one or more Jane Austen–based films or TV miniseries and want to know if the novel is as good as or perhaps better than the screen version (the answer to that is that the novel is always better!).
    You’re wondering why there are Jane Austen dating books, cookbooks, sequels, and books with her name in the title (instead of her name as an author).
    You want to know why Jane Austen is read and loved nearly two hundred years after her novels were first published and why she’s both a popular icon on T-shirts and tea cups as well as the subject of highly serious academic study (and no, this book doesn’t have a test at the end!).
    How This Book Is Organized
    This book is divided into five parts so you can easily find the information you want. Each part contains chapters relating to a particular topic about Austen and/or her world in relation to her writing. Use the Table of Contents or Index to help guide you to particular topics.
    Part I: Getting to Know Jane Austen, Lady and Novelist
    This part speculates about the burning question on everyone’s mind: “Why is Jane Austen everywhere today?” I discuss Austen’s unique popularity, what she meant by using the byline “by a Lady” and what her contemporary readers expected from that byline. Then I talk about the ups, downs, and ups of her popularity, especially since World War I, when British soldiers read her novels in the trenches to remember why they were fighting for England.
    Placing Austen in her world and what that means come next with explanations of the class system inherent in her day. I also explain who the gentry were (the gentry is a major term and focus in Austen’s writing). She writes about ladies and gentlemen at a time when people were actually called that not just because they were polite. For details on Austen’s life, head to Chapter 3, the biographical chapter. In Chapter 4, I discuss some of the key influences — literary and life — on Austen as a writer.
    Part II: Austen Observes Ladies and Gentlemen
    Austen’s novels deal with the courtship of young ladies and gentlemen. This part explains her characters’ behaviors when they dance, when they court, and when they decide to marry. “Dating” in Austen’s day and in her novels was totally different from what we assume dating to mean nowadays. Finally, this part looks at some of Austen’s wily and flirtatious females and seductive males — none of whom ever makes it to hero or heroine status.
    Part III: Living Life in Jane’s World
    One of Austen’s greatest skills is commenting on her world — socially, politically, and economically — with such subtlety that at times she doesn’t call attention to her own dissatisfaction. But Austen wasn’t only a writer of courtship novels; she was also a satirist — a satirist because she cared about what was going on in her world. One of Austen’s most complex characters is
Mansfield Park
’s Mary Crawford, who says, “‘I do not pretend to set people right, but I do