Mullan establishes up front that his goal is to explore historical context and the linguistic theory associated with Austen's oeuvre. Written with flair and based on a lifetime's study, What Matters in Jane Austen? will allow listeners to appreciate Jane Austen's work in greater depth than ever before.Īusten wrote novels, not cryptic crosswords It uses telling passages from Austen's letters and details from her own life to explain episodes in her novels: listeners will find out, for example, what novels she read, how much money she had to live on, and what she saw at the theater. What Matters in Jane Austen? illuminates the rituals and conventions of her fictional world in order to reveal her technical virtuosity and daring as a novelist. Listeners will discover when Austen's characters had their meals and what shops they went to how vicars got good livings and how wealth was inherited. In 20 short chapters, each of which explores a question prompted by Austen’s novels, Mullan illuminates the themes that matter most in her beloved fiction. Asking and answering some very specific questions about what goes on in her novels, he reveals the inner workings of their greatness. It’s all quite an achievement for the younger daughter of a country Rector who completed her formal education at the age of eleven and was never publicly acknowledged as a writer during her lifetime.Which important Austen characters never speak? Is there any sex in Austen? What do the characters call one another, and why? What are the right and wrong ways to propose marriage? In What Matters in Jane Austen?, John Mullan shows that we can best appreciate Austen's brilliance by looking at the intriguing quirks and intricacies of her fiction. She is celebrated as a social observer, a moralist, a comic genius, and as a popular and universal writer. Her name is a byword for wit, social observation and insight into the lives of women in the early 19th century. They have spawned sequels, prequels and spin offs, and there are countless festivals, clubs and societies in her honour. They have been translated into dozens of languages and are regularly adapted for film, TV and theatre. Today, 200 years after her death, Jane Austen’s six completed novels – Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion – are known and loved around the world. More recently, Austen critic John Mullan declared that Shakespeare and Dickens are ‘the only other English writers who can rival her continuing international appeal’ ( What Matters in Jane Austen? 2012). She was a great artist, equal in her small sphere to Shakespeare…’ As Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote in 1870: ‘Miss Austen understood the smallness of life to perfection. Jane Austen is one of the most famous and beloved writers in the canon of English literature, thought by many to be second only to Shakespeare.
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