30 Great Myths about Jane Austen

Claudia L. Johnson is the Murray Professor of English at Princeton University. She specializes in Eighteenth-Century and Nineteenth-Century British literature, and gender studies. Renowned for her works on Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft, Johnson's books include Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel; Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender and Sentimentality in the 1790s; and Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures, which won the Christian Gauss Award. Clara Tuite is Professor of English at the University of Melbourne, a Co-Director of the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Contemporary Culture Research Unit, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her books include Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon and Lord Byron and Scandalous Celebrity, which was awarded the Elma Dangerfield Prize by the International Association of Byron Societies.

• Abbreviations and Note on the Text viiAcknowledgements viiiIntroduction xiMyth 1 Jane Austen had no interest in fame 1Myth 2 There is no sex in Jane Austen’s novels 7Myth 3 Jane Austen wrote on little bits of ivory 14Myth 4 Jane Austen’s juvenilia are scraps which she outgrew 19Myth 5 Jane Austen’s novels are naturalistic 27Myth 6 Jane Austen was unconscious of her art 34Myth 7 Northanger Abbey is a spoof on Gothic fiction 43Myth 8 The Bath Jane Austen knew and loathed 49Myth 9 Jane Austen’s writing is easy to understand 56Myth 10 Sense and Sensibility is a satire on sensibility 61Myth 11 Jane Austen was the best-selling novelist of her time 66Myth 12 Regency Austen 72Myth 13 Only women read Jane Austen 80Myth 14 As Pride and Prejudice shows, all Austen’s novels are love stories 85Myth 15 Jane Austen never mentions the war 93Myth 16 Something happened to Jane Austen when she wrote Mansfield Park 101Myth 17 Jane Austen disapproved of the theater 107Myth 18 Jane Austen was a Christian moralist 114Myth 19 In Emma, Jane Austen created a heroine no one but an author would love 120Myth 20 Jane Austen and the amorous effects of brass 128Myth 21 Persuasion is an autumnal novel 134Myth 22 Jane Austen was a feminist/Jane Austen was not a feminist 141Myth 23 Jane Austen’s letters are mean and trivial 147Myth 24 Jane Austen was anonymous 155Myth 25 Jane Austen’s novels depict the traditional world of the aristocracy 160Myth 26 Jane Austen was a comic novelist 168Myth 27 Jane Austen’s novels are about good manners 174Myth 28 Jane Austen’s muslins 179Myth 29 Jane Austen writes escape fiction 187Myth 30 Jane Austen was a star-crossed lover 193Further Reading 200Index 203