Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Austen, Jane

Austen, Jane

Pride and Prejudice, [24] 78; Sense and Sensibility, [62] 89; Emma, [80] 7; Persuasion, [83] 45

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20240901093015 Richard Crockatt on Jane Austen's Persuasion, SF Issue 83

So Far Yet So Near

Richard Crockatt on Jane Austen, Persuasion

You do not have to be a paid-up member of the Janeite club to find yourself returning repeatedly to her novels. The urge to idolize Jane Austen is understandable but (in the spirit of the author herself) careful observation from a distance may serve us better. What is remarkable about her writing is not merely the vividness of her creations but the skill with which she inclines us to enter worlds whose manners and morals are in so many respects alien to our own. I cannot be the only reader who has found himself nodding in agreement with actions and expressions of opinion which would cause ructions in today’s world. Which is no more than to say that she is a past master at getting us to suspend our disbelief – or, to put it another way, to persuade us that her world is somehow ours.
20231201093033 Daisy Hay on Jane Austen, Emma, Slightly Foxed 80

Arrows of Revelation

Daisy Hay on Jane Austen, Emma

Towards the end of Jane Austen’s Emma (1816), the heroine Emma Woodhouse has a moment of blinding clarity. Throughout the novel she has been treating her old friend and neighbour, Mr Knightley, as little more than a familiar sparring partner. But as she learns that her friend Harriet is harbouring dreams of marriage with him, the scales fall from her eyes. ‘It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr Knightley must marry no one but herself!’
20190603124922 Daniel Macklin - Pauline Melville on Jane Austen, Slightly Foxed 62

Ire and Irritability

Pauline Melville on Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

I am having another stab at Jane Austen. Friends beg me to keep trying, anxious for me not to miss what they tell me is an unrivalled view of a luminous literary landscape. I have made efforts on and off over the years and never found her to my taste. Somewhere along the line at school I passed through Northanger Abbey without retaining much impression of it. But now I have made a pledge with a friend who works at the Royal Society of Literature. I must endeavour to read some Austen and my friend will attempt to read Wuthering Heights, a book she has heretofore avoided. She suggested I start with Sense and Sensibility, so I did.
20091201122539 Daisy Hay, Jane Austen - Slightly Foxed Issue 24

Plain Jane? Plain Wrong

Daisy Hay on Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

There is nothing ‘common-place’ about Pride and Prejudice. It has a tightly woven, seductively intricate plot, which unfolds so delicately that the reader falls blindly into the traps of imperception set by the author, alongside that most perfect of imperfect heroines, Elizabeth Bennet. It has dialogue which sparkles and sings in the most extraordinary way, so that characters come alive in only a few words. It has a hero and heroine who fence and fight and fall in love . . .

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