Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose sharply observed fiction examines courtship, class, money, and manners in Georgian society.
Regency Era: The period of British history when George IV ruled as prince regent, from 1811 to 1820. Austen’s mature novels depict the manners and institutions associated with this period.
Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen’s novel about Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, first published in 1813. Its changing judgments of Darcy and Elizabeth exemplify Austen’s use of irony and romantic conflict.
Free indirect speech: A narrative style that blends a third-person narrator’s grammar with a character’s idiom or thoughts. Austen uses it to move between Emma’s assumptions and the narrator’s understated corrections.
Cassandra Austen: Jane Austen’s elder sister and closest confidante, who preserved many of her letters and manuscripts. Cassandra’s surviving records provide rare evidence about Austen’s private life.
Austenmania: The enduring popular enthusiasm for Jane Austen, expressed through adaptations, tourism, clubs, and collectible editions. It shows how her novels became a cultural phenomenon beyond literary study.
Georgian Era: The period of British history spanning the reigns of the first four Hanoverian kings, from 1714 to 1830. Austen’s lifetime and fiction belong to this broader social and political setting.
Sense and Sensibility: Jane Austen’s 1811 novel about the Dashwood sisters and their contrasting responses to love and loss. The sisters’ differing temperaments let Austen examine feeling, judgment, and women’s economic precarity.
Irony: A contrast between an apparent meaning or expectation and the meaning conveyed by context or outcome. Her irony makes social pretension and self-deception legible without constant authorial judgment.
George Austen: An English clergyman and schoolmaster who was Jane Austen’s father. His household and encouragement gave Austen early access to books and writing.
Janeite: A devoted admirer of Jane Austen and her works, especially within organized fan communities. The term captures the unusually participatory culture surrounding Austen’s legacy.