Historical Austen

William H. Galperin is Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and author of The Return of the Visible in British Romanticism.

• IntroductionPART I. HISTORICIZING AUSTENChapter 1. History, Silence, and "The Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot"Chapter 2. The Picturesque, the Real, and the Consumption of Jane AustenChapter 3. Why Jane Austen Is Not Frances Burney: Probability, Possibility, and Romantic CounterhegemonyPART II. READING THE HISTORICAL AUSTENChapter 4. Lady Susan and the Failure of Austen's Early Published NovelsChapter 5. Narrative Incompetence in Northanger AbbeyChapter 6. Jane Austen's Future ShockChapter 7. Nostalgia in EmmaChapter 8. The Body in Persuasion and SanditonNotesIndexAcknowledgments

"Impressive and often dazzling."-Studies in Romanticism"Insightful, learned, intense, and challenging, William Galperin's The Historical Austen offers a new turn in a critical conversation that appeared to have reached its limits. More than a new reading of Austen, however, Galperin also brings historicist criticism to a new level."-Eighteenth-Century Life"Important, intelligent, engaged, and engaging. . . . The best study of Austen published during the past twenty years."-Clio"Startlingly original, scrupulously researched, and formidably smart, The Historical Austen is the most important book on Jane Austen's works to appear in the last fifteen years."-Deidre Lynch, Indiana University"A book that will revolutionize Jane Austen studies."-Adela Pinch, University of Michigan"In this engrossing revisionary experiment, what gets contextualized with immense and unprecedented subtlety is no less than the evolving and period-bound operation of narrative technique itself."-Garrett Stewart, University of Iowa"Consistently provocative and frequently excellent."-TLS"In a style that displays a gift for startling turns of phrase and wit, Galperin offers a learned, vigorous, innovative reconsideration of Austen and her critics. . . . Galperin is equally informative about narrative techniques that work or fail and on how Austen represents early capitalism. . . . Informed by feminist criticism, the book could also serve as an advanced primer on the history and theory of representation, especially its picturesque and realist variants. . . . Essential."-Choice"A major reexamination of both Austen's oeuvre and the history of the novel."-Albion"A signal work for current Romantic studies and for this historical moment."-Romantic Circles Reviews"Galperin presents an Austen far less consistently conservative or progressive, far more self-reflexive, and infinitely more complicated than the Austen of much recent scholarship. His book is far richer than any brief review can suggest. . . . This book is so extraordinary. Galperin offers a compellingly revisionist view of Austen's works."-JASNA Newsletter"An exemplary instance of one ideal of literary scholarship, the reflexive evaluation of literary forms in and as history."-Studies in English Literature