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Sanditon: A Political Novel
Jane Austen’s final attempt to write a novel resulted in the 12-chapter fragment Sanditon, originally titled The Brothers (MW 363), begun in January of 1817 and put aside in March as Austen’s health declined. As ...
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Introduction
Louisa Stuart Costello was a popular and critically acclaimed poet, novelist, travel writer, historian, biographer, artist, and medieval scholar, whose long life spanned the nineteenth century. Her wide-ranging....
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Juvenilia: A Liberal Conservative
National politics and political economics play a prominent role in Jane Austen’s Catharine: or the Bower, dated August 1792 and written when Jane Austen was 16 years old. The protagonist, Catharine or Kitty, live...
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Conclusion
On Wednesday in the past week, a modest grave in the Cemetery of St Martin, Boulogne-sur-Mer, closed over the remains of Louisa Stuart Costello. This lady’s books, highly prized in their day, are not out of da...
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Persuasion: The Post-Waterloo Crash
The first three chapters of Persuasion repeat a scenario that Jane Austen had already experimented with in her 1792 fragment Catharine: or the Bower. As far as it progresses, Catharine is the story of two politic...
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Louisa Stuart Costello and Poetry
Costello’s first publication and her last book were both volumes of poetry in an enduring writing career. When the death of her father forced Costello to earn her living, she turned to poetry to supplement the ....
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Louisa Stuart Costello, History, and Historical Biography
David Hume described the second half of the eighteenth century as “the historical age.” Some of the most lauded historiographic works of all time were produced at this time, not least Hume’s own History of Engla...
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Introduction: Jane Austen’s Legacy
In 2017, a wide-eyed, youthful image of Jane Austen is to appear on the reverse of all newly-minted, Bank of England £10 banknotes. It is an appropriate gesture, as no one, except perhaps the Queen on the othe...
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Sense and Sensibility: Poor Law Reform
In 1795, as Jane Austen was writing Elinor and Marianne, to be revised in 1797 and 1798 as Sense and Sensibility, Britons were experiencing the first financial crisis of Austen’s lifetime, the economic results of...
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Northanger Abbey and The Watsons: The Restriction Act
Northanger Abbey begins with an “ADVERTISEMENT, BY THE AUTHORESS” (NA 10). In this preface, Jane Austen is very particular about the exact time-frame of the novel’s setting: “The public are entreated to bear in ...
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Emma: William Pitt’s Utopia
Elsie Michie, in The Vulgar Question of Money: Heiresses, Materialism, and the Novel of Manners from Jane Austen to Henry James, notes the many similarities between Adam Smith’s depictions of rich and poor women ...
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Louisa Stuart Costello’s Translations and Medievalism
Costello’s interest in medievalism was a lifelong scholarly and artistic commitment and passion that infiltrated every area of her writing and publishing. Her first job, copying illuminated manuscripts from the....
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Louisa Stuart Costello and Nineteenth-Century Journalism
For many women writers, journalism was a first step to a literary career or a means to boost income from books of poetry or fiction. Journals and periodicals were in constant need of poetry, essays, and anonymo.....
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Louisa Stuart Costello and Travel Writing
In the first half of the nineteenth century, travel writing was emerging as a popular and lucrative genre. The end of the Napoleonic Wars once again opened the continent for travelers. Instead of the privileged....
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Louisa Stuart Costello and Novels
As Hawes notes, “In Britain the eighteenth-century novel and eighteenth-century history-writing shared the same intellectual universe. Only in the nineteenth-century would Leopold von Ranke’s emphasis on primar....
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Pride and Prejudice: The Speenhamland System
When Pride and Prejudice was originally written as First Impressions in 1796 and 1797, Austen’s novel appears to have been taking a stand in favor of two controversial economic proposals being debated in the Hous...
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Mansfield Park: The Condition of England
In Jane Austen and the War of Ideas, Marilyn Butler reads Mansfield Park as an affirmation of Tory politics, yet Butler acknowledges that the novel questions the basic tenants of conservatism: “[Austen] can explo...
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Louisa Stuart Costello’s Life
Costello was born on October 9, 1799, to James Francis Costello, a captain in the 14th Regiment, and Elizabeth Tothridge. There is still some debate about the issue of Costello’s place of birth. Rosemary Mitch...
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Louisa Stuart Costello and Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana was a consistent and powerful aspect of the medieval revival. With Arthurian chivalric ideals at the heart of the cult of the English gentleman, Arthur became a potent image: the leader who brought p....
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Introduction
Ever since their first publications in the late 1840s, the works of the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) have inspired countless literary adaptations (novels, dramas, short stories), musical works (...