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Very Short Introductions #694
Jane Austen: A Very Short Introduction
Jane Austen wrote six of the best-loved novels in the English language, as well as a smaller corpus of works unpublished in her day, including three volumes of witty, non-realist juvenilia and the innovative, unfinished, Sanditon. She pioneered new techniques for representing voices, minds, and hearts in narrative prose, and was a penetrating satirist of social tensions and trends. Yet Austen struggled for many years to break into print, and even as she became a published author in the last years of her relatively short life, reading tastes and book-trade expectations constrained as much as they enabled her literary career.
This Very Short introduction explores the major themes of Austen criticism through close analysis of her major and minor works, with particular emphasis on the literary, social, and political backgrounds from which the novels emerge, and with which they engage. Thomas Keymer combines critical introductions to each of Austen's six major novels with an exploration of the key themes in her works. The Austen who emerges is a writer shaped by the literary experiments and socio-political debates of the revolution decade, drawn in her maturity to a fundamentally conservative vision of social harmony, yet forever complicating this vision through the disruptive ironies and satirical energies of her prose.
This Very Short introduction explores the major themes of Austen criticism through close analysis of her major and minor works, with particular emphasis on the literary, social, and political backgrounds from which the novels emerge, and with which they engage. Thomas Keymer combines critical introductions to each of Austen's six major novels with an exploration of the key themes in her works. The Austen who emerges is a writer shaped by the literary experiments and socio-political debates of the revolution decade, drawn in her maturity to a fundamentally conservative vision of social harmony, yet forever complicating this vision through the disruptive ironies and satirical energies of her prose.
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Published April 27, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 25, 2025
I picked this up because I am currently teaching Pride and Prejudice (and LOVING it). I mostly picked it up for the chapter specifically dealing with P&P. I felt like it did a pretty decent job explaining that fantastic narrative thing she does, the one sometimes called "free indirect discourse," where the third-person narrator takes on the perspective and verbal style of the person whose viewpoint it is at the moment. However, Keymer commits various literary sins common to lit critics. He DARED call some of her style inflated and overblown while himself using words like "oleaginous" and "arenaceous." And that, my friends, is why I am not super likely to go into professional literary theory for my second career.
January 19, 2024
A book that makes you want to read more Austen.
Keymer does well to highlight Austen’s eloquent, economic writing, juxtaposing the clear talent and polish in her writing with that of his own. These 130 pages doubly function as a thesaurus, gratuitously getting in their own way.
Still, the author effectively unpacks the themes and purposes and effect of Austen’s works, the structure especially well designed to accomplish this.
Keymer does well to highlight Austen’s eloquent, economic writing, juxtaposing the clear talent and polish in her writing with that of his own. These 130 pages doubly function as a thesaurus, gratuitously getting in their own way.
Still, the author effectively unpacks the themes and purposes and effect of Austen’s works, the structure especially well designed to accomplish this.
December 31, 2024
The OUP's Very Short Introduction series is excellent, with hundreds of clever, brief and pellucid studies on a stellar range of subjects and persons. This is a more than worthy addition to the collection, and a truly outstanding literary appreciation of Jane Austen's six novels, her themes, principal characters, virtuoso style, technical skills, and ideas.
It's a bravura performance, all the more remarkable for being a mere 176 pages in length. Beautifully elegant in phrasing, precise and brilliant in its analysis, insights and arguments, with an ikebana-like excellence in his select quotations from each of the novels. It overflows with intelligence in every sentence.
To my knowledge, there is no better short study of Austen or introduction to her work, its worth and her plethora of qualities. It's also a wonderful complement to Barbara Hardy's equally superb A Reading of Jane Austen (1975), and Janet Todd's compelling studies and essays on the novelist. I now can't wait to read Keymer's Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics (2020).
It's a bravura performance, all the more remarkable for being a mere 176 pages in length. Beautifully elegant in phrasing, precise and brilliant in its analysis, insights and arguments, with an ikebana-like excellence in his select quotations from each of the novels. It overflows with intelligence in every sentence.
To my knowledge, there is no better short study of Austen or introduction to her work, its worth and her plethora of qualities. It's also a wonderful complement to Barbara Hardy's equally superb A Reading of Jane Austen (1975), and Janet Todd's compelling studies and essays on the novelist. I now can't wait to read Keymer's Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics (2020).
July 31, 2023
A wonderful addition to the "A Very Short Introduction" series from Oxford Pub. This read like a very well done English lecture at uni and it was easy to get through. If you like Austen and are new to scholarship about her works then this is definitely a book to check out!
July 8, 2023
I've now read four of the VSI books and they seem to be hit or miss. Two were excellent and the other two were not written with the general public in mind. Bummer because I really thought the Jane Austen one would be approachable.
December 26, 2025
“In the end, Jane Austen at 60—Austen on the cusp of the Victorian era, and in Woolf’s eyes ‘the forerunner of Henry James and of Proust’—is a phenomenon too rich to be fully imagined. But from Jane Austen at 40 we have quite enough achievement to be going on with. Technically, with the eloquent economy of her satirical insinuations and psychological hints, she was a pioneer of the novel genre whose impact—if impact is the word for a writer of such transcendent subtlety—continues to be felt. Thematically, she probed what her era called the recesses of the heart and mind, while also exploring, with astonishing penetration, the consequences for heart and mind of overarching circumstances, structures, and interactions. With her characteristic blend of delicacy and defiance, she told the Prince Regent, via his librarian, that as a novelist she must keep to her own style of fiction, and ‘go on in [her] own Way.’”
This is a unique introduction to the life and work of Jane Austen. Rather than telling a straightforward biography of Jane’s life, the author takes a literary dive into each of Jane Austen’s works from her teenage years to her death—both unpublished and published works. There is a lot to chew on here for anyone interested in literary theory or in Jane Austen’s literary contributions. As Keymer notes, “It’s a commonplace of literary history that Austen’s breakthrough achievement was to meld the contrasting techniques of Richardson and Fielding into a flexible third-person mode that also conveyed the authentic intimacy of first-person introspection.” I learned a lot about Jane’s subtle and unique literary genius throughout this book, as well as her development as a writer. Speculating on Jane’s final and unfinished work, “Sanditon,” Keymer observes a move in Austen’s writing from conversation to consciousness to build a character. Jane Austen was indeed a very subtle and at time ambiguous writer, leaving her readers to connect dots and draw implications in some cases. This subtlety is what has led to manifold interpretations of Jane Austen as a more progressive writer seeking to break out of the norms of rank and class during her day, or as a conservative desiring to maintain the status quo concerning wealth, class, and courtship. However one interprets Austen’s works, it is clear that her primary themes and interests are the interplay of wealth, rank, and courtship.
My reason for giving 3 stars is because this book—even if a short introduction—is very dryly written and at times very hard to follow where Keymer is going with a section. Keymer seems to be a somewhat clunky writer, so it makes this introduction unfortunately inaccessible at places unless you have a proficient knowledge of literary theory and the social issues/politics of Jane’s day. What helped me at several points were the 3 prior biographies I’ve read on Jane Austen. Still an informative read!
This is a unique introduction to the life and work of Jane Austen. Rather than telling a straightforward biography of Jane’s life, the author takes a literary dive into each of Jane Austen’s works from her teenage years to her death—both unpublished and published works. There is a lot to chew on here for anyone interested in literary theory or in Jane Austen’s literary contributions. As Keymer notes, “It’s a commonplace of literary history that Austen’s breakthrough achievement was to meld the contrasting techniques of Richardson and Fielding into a flexible third-person mode that also conveyed the authentic intimacy of first-person introspection.” I learned a lot about Jane’s subtle and unique literary genius throughout this book, as well as her development as a writer. Speculating on Jane’s final and unfinished work, “Sanditon,” Keymer observes a move in Austen’s writing from conversation to consciousness to build a character. Jane Austen was indeed a very subtle and at time ambiguous writer, leaving her readers to connect dots and draw implications in some cases. This subtlety is what has led to manifold interpretations of Jane Austen as a more progressive writer seeking to break out of the norms of rank and class during her day, or as a conservative desiring to maintain the status quo concerning wealth, class, and courtship. However one interprets Austen’s works, it is clear that her primary themes and interests are the interplay of wealth, rank, and courtship.
My reason for giving 3 stars is because this book—even if a short introduction—is very dryly written and at times very hard to follow where Keymer is going with a section. Keymer seems to be a somewhat clunky writer, so it makes this introduction unfortunately inaccessible at places unless you have a proficient knowledge of literary theory and the social issues/politics of Jane’s day. What helped me at several points were the 3 prior biographies I’ve read on Jane Austen. Still an informative read!
December 8, 2023
DnF.
As an ordinary fan of Jane Austen, I am really pissed off by this author.
Yes, I know in academia we could "read between lines" discussing politics and society in her work. But seriously this is VSI, and no book enthusiasts expect to reading Mansfield Park for Slavery abolition and Colonial politics!
Even Somerset. Maugham, the guy wrote Moon and Six penses, did better job in introducing the charm of Austen's work; and he was not even an literature critic! His only qualification is, that he's from Britain!
Oxford, do me a favor, try not to find a non-British guy writes about your own author, ok?!
As an ordinary fan of Jane Austen, I am really pissed off by this author.
Yes, I know in academia we could "read between lines" discussing politics and society in her work. But seriously this is VSI, and no book enthusiasts expect to reading Mansfield Park for Slavery abolition and Colonial politics!
Even Somerset. Maugham, the guy wrote Moon and Six penses, did better job in introducing the charm of Austen's work; and he was not even an literature critic! His only qualification is, that he's from Britain!
Oxford, do me a favor, try not to find a non-British guy writes about your own author, ok?!
October 5, 2024
I enjoyed this excellent little book but I don't think it is really an 'introduction' to Jane Austen's works. I wouldn't recommend this if you aren't already familiar with Jane Austen. Having said that, there are some very interesting and thought provoking ideas which made me want to go back to the novels and read them all again. I found the chapter on Pride and Prejudice and Austen's use of letters and the epistolary form particularly fascinating. If you have read the novels previously, you may well find this 'introduction' worth reading.
January 22, 2024
Dense and rich, more like what a VSI should be.
March 17, 2025
A short introduction into Austen's major and minor work. She struggled for many years to break into print.
June 26, 2024
This series is hit or miss but this was a perfect review of current Austen scholarly discussions rather than a long Wikipedia article. Only Mary Beard’s VSI book on Classicism was better.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews