Promotional Information

The Making of Jane Austen is beautifully written and replete with new information. Devoney Looser provides an incisive and thoroughly original account of how an obscure country clergyman's daughter came to occupy a dominant position among the English novelists. In the bicentenary year of Austen's death, this work will fascinate students, scholars and general readers alike. -- Peter Sabor, McGill University, coeditor of Jane Austen's Manuscript Works A potential game changer, full of force and originality. Looser's refreshingly democratic approach to Austen scholarship not only will add to our knowledge of this author's reception history and literary afterlife but will surprise even the most informed Austen scholar. -- Janine Barchas, University of Texas at Austin, author of Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity This highly entertaining book makes clear that contemporary Janeites - with their cosplay, their clashing interpretations of much-loved novels, their wet-shirt Darcy, and their fiercely possessive relationship to their favorite author - are heirs to a tradition of Austen-love that stretches back to the early 19th century. Devoney Looser's brilliant detective work introduces us to a cast of creative, courageous and eccentric women and men who helped keep Austen's work alive and vital into our own time. -- Deborah Yaffe, author of Among the Janeites: A Journey Through the World of Jane Austen Fandom The Making of Jane Austen is a fascinating and often very funny account of how Austen became one of English literature's best-loved novelists. Devoney Looser has already made a reputation as one of her generation's foremost Austen scholars; here she takes her game to the next level. -- Jenny Davidson, Columbia University Exuberant and unfailingly entertaining, The Making of Jane Austen challenges many pieties about the woman novelist and her fame. Looking beyond the elite caretakers of Austen's reputation, Looser helps us better appreciate the multiple, surprising ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century audiences enjoyed, used, and adapted Austen's books. -- Deidre Lynch, Harvard University, author of Loving Literature: A Cultural History A splendid and indispensable work for all readers interested in how Austen is not simply any old great author but a cultural icon who continues to evolve in fascinating and often conflicting ways. -- Claudia Johnson, Princeton University

Table of Contents

Introduction: Jane Austen Matters
Part I: Jane Austen, Illustrated
1. Austen's First English Illustrator: Ferdinand Pickering's Vioctorian Sensationalism
2. Visual Austen Experiments: From Lush Landscapes to Bearded Heroes
3. A Golden Age for Illustrated Austen: From Peacocks to Photoplays
Part II: Jane Austen, Dramatized
4. Austen's First Dramatist: Rosina Filippi's Duologues for Every Cultivated Amateur
5. Playing Mr. Darcy before Laurence Olivier: Cross Dressing, Consuming Passion, and Cracking the Whip
6. Dear Jane: Christian Spinster, Feminist Flirt, and Shadow Actress
7. Stage to Screen Pride and Prejudice: Hollywood's Austen and Its Unrealized Screenplays
Part III: Jane Austen, Politicized
8. The Night of the Divine Jane: Men's Club Clashes and Politics in the Periodical Press
9. Stone-Throwing Jane Austen: Suffragist Street Activism, Grand Pageants, and Costume Parties
Part IV: Jane Austen, Schooled
10. The First Jane Austen Dissertation: George Pellew and the Human Telephone
11. Textbook Austens: From McGuffey's Readers to National Lampoon
Coda: Twenty-First Century Jane Austen
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Suggested Further Reading
Notes
Bibliography
Index

About the Author

Devoney Looser is a professor of English at Arizona State University. She is the author of Women Writers and Old Age in Great Britain, 1750-1850 and British Women Writers and the Writing of History, 1670-1820.

Reviews

Austen fans have another book to add to their libraries. Publishers Weekly