Reading Jane Austen

Jenny Davidson, a novelist who also works as an academic, approaches Jane Austen's fiction from the viewpoint of a writer. The book examines the formal side of Austen's work, including narration, the craft of writing novels, and how her fictions are put together. It also considers the social and women's history, along with the moral and behavioural codes, that run through her novels. Written for newcomers as well as longtime admirers, it offers a route into Austen's writing and a fresh set of observations for experienced readers.

The book also takes up a wider question: why some authors draw unusually devoted followings, a pattern seen with Shakespeare and, in very different ways, with J.R.R. Tolkien, Ayn Rand and Toni Morrison. Davidson argues that the emotional attachment readers feel for a book and the analytical study of how it works, what it means and why it matters are not opposed but work in productive tension. Both depend heavily on rereading, especially of books a reader already knows well.