What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved - Hardcover

John Mullan

3.96

2,562 ratings by Goodreads

9781408820117: What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408820110 ISBN 13: 9781408820117

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012

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What are the right and wrong ways to propose marriage? How old is Mr Collins? And why is it risky to go to the seaside? One of the delights of reading Jane Austen is noticing the puzzles she sets her readers. In 20 succinct chapters, Mullan asks and answers a number of apparently superficial questions about Austens world, to demonstrate how its rituals and conventions reveal her technical virtuosity and sheer daring as a novelist.

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About the Author:

John Mullan is a professor in the English department at UCL. He writes the regular 'Guardian Book Club' column on fiction in the Guardian and frequently appears on the BBC's Review Show. He was a judge of the 'Best of the Booker Prize' in 2008 and a judge of the Man Booker Prize itself in 2009. He has lectured widely on Jane Austen in the UK and also in the US, and makes regular appearances at the UK literary festivals.

Review:

One effect of reading Mullen's compendium is to make you appreciate the sheer density, the tight-woven intricacy, of every scene and every exchange in Austen. His approach illuminates, because no detail is redundant. Every remark, every accident, every material exchange, is a revelation * Guardian, Books of the Year * Any new book on Jane Austen raises the urgent question, would I get more pleasure from reading this than from re-reading my favourite Jane Austen novel? If you decide to give What Matters in Jane Austen a chance you'll know after a few pages that you've made the right choice * John Carey, Sunday Times * If you want to know what Jane Austen's characters look like, which of them never speak, how old they are, what they call each other, why it's risky for them to visit the seaside, what games they play, or how much money is enough, this book will tell you, in minute and richly entertaining detail' * Jane Shilling, Daily Mail * A fine collection of essays ... Like all good literary critics, he has the happy knack of making you read even familiar works with fresh eyes, and the essays in this book are among the best of their kind ***** * Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Daily Telegraph * Every remark, every accident, every material exchange, is a revelation * Guardian * Absorbing ... Whether the topic is age, sex, death, money, illness, holidays, accidents, the weather or marriage proposals, Austen's reticence has seldom been handled with such delicate precision ... Such is the quality and incisiveness of Mullan's critical engagement with Austen that the only thing to regret about his book is that there isn't more of it ... What Matters in Jane Austen? is a model of clarity, verve and perception * The Literary Review * If you love Jane Austen you'll love this book too - it's almost as good as finding an unpublished novel ... Fascinating * Lady *

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