Jane Austen

Originally issued in 1924, this Routledge reissue offers a view of Jane Austen from early twentieth-century critics on both sides of the English Channel. It brings together a translated study by the French scholar Léonie Villard and a critical essay by R. Brimley Johnson, a well-known biographer and critic.

Johnson's essay draws on the unpublished epistolary novel Love and Friendship. It argues against the common view that Austen belongs to the tradition of nineteenth-century realism, proposing instead that her fiction draws heavily on the conventions of romance. He also traces how her writing moved from the parody of Northanger Abbey to the fuller portraiture of her later novels.

Villard's wider study examines many aspects of Austen's work, including women and marriage, psychology, satire, the landed gentry, and the enduring reach and significance of the novels.