The Official Jane Austen Book Club discussion

Has anyone read any authors from Jane's time, basically the authors she read? Right now I am reading the novel by Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho. It is somewhat gripping esp. when you get to the middle of the novel.

I’ve read Udolpho as well but no other gothics.

Have read two of Fanny Burney’s books, Evelina and Camilla: By Frances Burney - Illustrated. Evelina is a lot shorter than Camilla and is entertaining but uneven. They say Frances Burney - Cecilia. or Memoirs of an Heiress: Volume III of III, also very long, is her best book.

I recently read Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda and loved about half of it, but it’s kind of two books in one. I’d like to read more of her work.

Charlotte Lenox’s The Female Quixote is an extended satire in the eighteenth-century style but I found it a bit tedious.

Among male authors Jane Austen read, I’ve read books by Smollett (The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker), Richardson (Samuel Richardson, Clarissa and Pamela, the latter not too long and fairly readable), Fielding (The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Shamela, his spoof of Richardson’s book Pamela), some of Sir Walter Scott’s historicals, Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, and Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield.

There are probably some more that I can’t think of at the moment.

There are some books on my TBR that I’d like to get to sooner rather than later: Marriage by S.E. Ferrier by Susan Ferrier and William Cowper’s long poem The Task, which has been called Austen’s favorite poem.

There are also some gothic spoofs that might be fun, like Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey or Eaton Stannard Barrett’s The Heroine, Or, Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader.

For anyone looking for the “Austen experience” in their reading, you won’t find much amid her contemporaries; she really was revolutionary and stood alone, I’m afraid. I get something of the same feeling from a few twentieth-century British social-comedy writers like Angela Thirkell, Stella Gibbons, Margery Sharp, or Molly Clavering.

I have not read any.

AiB has read Nightmare Abbey and Marriage. Yeah for the Abbey and so-so for Marriage.

A century later, or nearly, Edith Wharton was writing on similar themes, though mostly in respect of New York society.

I do like Edith Wharton

Me too!

Thank you for mentioning all those other authors! I think remember hearing about Evelina.


Abigail wrote: "I’ve read Udolpho as well but no other gothics.

Have read two of Fanny Burney’s books, Evelina and Camilla: By Frances Burney - Illustrated. Evelina is a lot shorter ..."

Abigail wrote: "I’ve read Udolpho as well but no other gothics.

Have read two of Fanny Burney’s books, Evelina and Camilla: By Frances Burney - Illustrated. Evelina is a lot shorter ..."

Yes, she's great!

Jan wrote: "I do like Edith Wharton"

Not so many happy endings though, alas, as Jane Austen. I always thought the ending of House of Mirth particularly sad - when it could have been otherwise. But I guess that was the whole point of the sorry tale!!