A Companion to Jane Austen Studies

(Hardback)

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Jane Austen significantly shaped the development of the English novel, and her works continue to be read widely today. Though she is best known for her novels "Sense and Sensibility", "Pride and Prejudice", "Mansfield Park", "Emma", "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion", she also wrote poems, letters and various pieces of juvenalia. These writings have been attracting the attention of scholars; her major works have already generated a large body of scholarly and critical studies. This reference is a guide to her works and the response to them. Austen's works are fraught with ambiguity. Because she was adept at displaying numerous aspects of an issue, her writings invite multiple interpretations. In light of the ambiguity of her texts, each of her major works is approached from a reader-response perspectve, in which an expert contributor illuminates the reader's relationship to her writing. And because so many readers have had such varied responses to her novels, the volume also includes chapters summarizing the critical response to each of her major works. In addition, the book includes separate chapters on her poems, letters and prayers.

Reviews

[A] Companion to Jane Austen Studies, edited by Laura Cooper Lambdin and Robert Thomas Lambdin, distinguishes itself from other such collections through its detailed attention to Austen's critical reception(there are seperate essays for each of the novels, as well as the juvenilia and unfinished work)as well as to such Austeniana as the poems, charades, and prayers.-Studies in English Literature. 1500-1900
"A Companion to Jane Austen Studies, edited by Laura Cooper Lambdin and Robert Thomas Lambdin, distinguishes itself from other such collections through its detailed attention to Austen's critical reception(there are seperate essays for each of the novels, as well as the juvenilia and unfinished work)as well as to such Austeniana as the poems, charades, and prayers."-Studies in English Literature. 1500-1900
"[A] Companion to Jane Austen Studies, edited by Laura Cooper Lambdin and Robert Thomas Lambdin, distinguishes itself from other such collections through its detailed attention to Austen's critical reception(there are seperate essays for each of the novels, as well as the juvenilia and unfinished work)as well as to such Austeniana as the poems, charades, and prayers."-Studies in English Literature. 1500-1900

Author Bio

LAURA COONER LAMBDIN teaches Professional Communications in the University of South Moore School of Business. She has published on Malory, Chaucer, and various Victorian poets, in such journals as Philological Quarterly and Arthurian Interpretations. With Robert T. Lambdin, she has coauthored Camelot in the Nineteenth Century (1999) and coedited Chaucer's Pilgrims (1996) and the Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature (2000), all available from Greenwood Press. ROBERT THOMAS LAMBDIN is Assistant Professor of English in the College Applied Professions at the University of South Carolina. With Laura C. Lambdin, he has coauthored Camelot in the Nineteenth Century (1999) and coedited Chaucer's Pilgrims (1996) and the Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature (2000), all available from Greenwood Press.