Then came the mid-20th-century revival of interest after the 1923 publication of the scholarly Standard Edition of her writings edited by R.W. A late-Victorian surge of interest was sparked by the publication of A Memoir of Jane Austen by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh in 1870 (a second expanded edition followed the next year), the Letters of Jane Austen by her great-nephew Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Baron Brabourne) in 1884, and the best-selling "Peacock Edition" of Pride and Prejudice illustrated by Hugh Thomson in 1894: We might think we know the general outline of Austen's rediscovery by later generations. And yet today, as scholar Claire Harman wrote in her own book on the posthumous creation of Austen's reputation, Jane's Fame (Henry Holt, 2009), "her six completed novels are among the best-known, best-loved, most-read works in the English language" (p. After her death in 1817 her novels went out of print until the 1830s. All of the novels issued during Austen's lifetime were published anonymously, and in their initial appearance achieved only modest success. In her introduction to The Making of Jane Austen (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), scholar Devoney Looser consciously echoes Simone de Beauvoir's "On ne naƮt pas femme: on le devient" (One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman). Image source: Arizona State University She was not born, but rather became, Jane Austen.
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