Here's another reference to this!
Posted by P. Bingham on April 08, 1998 at 23:42:48:
In response to NEWSFLASH: Jane Austen a Space Alien!!!, written by The Mysterious H.C. on April 01, 1998 at 12:05:55
From the Penguin History of Literature: The Romantic Period Edited by David B. Pirie (1994)
"In 1975, two hundred years after her birth, George Steiner voiced what had long been a common view: 'At the height of political and industrial revolution, in a decade of formidable philosophical activity, Miss Austen composes novels almost extra-territorial to history.' In the same year Marilyn Butler, in Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, re-examined the novels in light of contemporary ideological conflict and found them a clear, partisan commitment to reactionary social and moral values. few would now be likely to endorse the older view of Austen, as outside the historical conflicts and pressures of her time, yet it is not altogether easy to place her in relation to them. Austen's silence on major public events cannot be ignored, especially now that it has been made clear, through such studies as warren Roberts's Jane Austen and the French Revolution (1979) as well as by recent biographers, that it has not been the result of ignorance, but of deliberate choice."
Actually this seems to be a very good book and very much easily read. They devote about 27 pages to Jane and how she fits into the scheme of things Romantic. It also covers Byron, Shelley, Keats, Blake & Wordsworth.
Patricia
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