Jane Austen and the Popular Novel - by A Mandal (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Criticism has traditionally fixed Austen's oeuvre within the ideological locus of the 1790s, ignoring the more topical attributes that her novels display. Such accounts have consequently neglected the complex engagements that took place between Austen's fiction and early nineteenth-century fiction. Informed by a macrocosmic sense of the Romantic-era novel market and a microcosmic analysis of intertexual dynamics, Jane Austen and the Popular Novel provides a fresh and alternative perspective on the mature fiction of Jane Austen.

Review Quotes

'Jane Austen and the Popular Novel ought to transform our understandings of this celebrated author. In his groundbreaking study, Anthony Mandal overturns key assumptions about Austen's authorship, presenting new research on her publishers and would-be publishers and offering illuminating readings of Regency-era fiction. Anyone serious about his or her Austen should read this book.' - Devoney Looser, Department of English, University of Missouri-Columbia, USA

'Such detailed knowledge of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century publishing trade makes this an especially important contribution to Austen Studies. [...] Jane Austen and the Popular Novel may be unassuming in appearance but its scope and significance are far from modest.' - Fiona Stafford, Somerville College, Oxford - BARS Bulletin & Review

About the Author

ANTHONY MANDAL is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Cardiff, UK. His research focuses on the Romantic novel, book history and the Gothic. He is editor of the journal Romantic Textualities: Literature and Print Culture, 1780-1840, co-editor of The English Novel, 1830-1836 (2003) and The Reception of Jane Austen in Europe (forthcoming, 2007), and developer of British Fiction, 1800-29: A Database of Production, Circulation & Reception (2004).