简明英国文学史.docVIP

Jane Austen, a woman novelist who chose to be the to represent the limited scope of the English countryside and the realistic life of Middle-class families there. It has always been difficult to fit Austen to the picture of the time in which she lived. Sometimes she was introduced together with the novelists of the 18th century, but more often she was treated as a unique novelist of the early 19th century who did not belong to the dominant Romantic trend. P209__P214 Her life and literary career Jane Austen (1775-1817) was the daughter of a clergyman in Hampshire. We know little about her life except for the following simple facts: a) she was the sixth child and received her education mainly from her father; b) she remained single all her life, but was surrounded by a very lively and affectionate family environment; c) she started writing in her mid-teens and try to keep what she wrote as a secret for quite a long time. The family moved to Bath in 1801, and after her father passed away, they moved further to Southampton 1806, and finally back again to Hampshire where she died of Addison’s disease. Austen read widely by herself novels by Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Fanny Burney, and many others, and poetry by Cowper, Scott, etc. In her novels we notice obvious traces of Fielding’s and Richardson’s influence. From the former she developed the skills of presenting social pictures with humorous and sarcastic touches, and from the latter she takes the theme of women’s courtship and marriage. In 1811 she published her first novel sense and sensibility which has its predecessor in a juvenile sketch by her called揈linor and Mariannee”. Then she produced constantly: Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, Emma in 1816, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion posthumously in 1818. She left behind her an unpublished novel The Watsons, which was started between Northanger Abbey and the revision of Sense and Sensibility. All her novel were well received. Sir Walter Sco