Jane Austen has more readers today than at any time in history. Many of Austen’s legions of fans, however, came to her novels after first seeing films or other adaptations made for twenty-first century audiences. Austen herself conversely spent her literary career undermining romantic clichés and rethinking novel conventions. Confident that she and her contemporaries shared a common reading culture, Austen deliberately constructed her novels to set readerly expectations, only to disrupt or confound those expectations by challenging her readers’ assumptions and values. In Reading with Jane Austen, Elaine Bander carefully rereads the great author’s novels—beginning with her late work of juvenilia, “Catharine, or The Bower,” and ending with her final fragment, “Sanditon”—against the rich context of late Georgian literary and intellectual culture. In doing so, Bander invites us into the transformative experience that Austen intentionally designed for her earliest readers, adding new layers of appreciation for those who love her work.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
 

ELAINE BANDER is retired from Dawson College in Montreal, Canada, where she taught English for three decades. She is the author of dozens of essays and several book chapters on Austen and other writers, and served as president of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Canada) as well as of The Burney Society (North America).

Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Jane Austen’s Words
2. Reading Frances Burney
3. Robert Burns, Sir Charles Grandison, and Sir Edward Denham
4. Charlotte Smith in “Catharine, or the Bower”
5. Mrs. Smith in Northanger Abbey
6. Reading Mysteries at Bath and Northanger
7. Reading Marianne Dashwood
8. From Cecilia to Pride and Prejudice: “What becomes of the moral?”
9. Reading Mr. Darcy
10. Fanny Price: “all the heroism of principle”
11. Love and Friendship in Emma
12. The Smiths in Persuasion
Conclusion: The Sea, “Sanditon,” and Speculation
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index