Why Jane Austen?

Combining literary criticism, biography, cultural studies, and women's studies to build a case for why Jane Austen remains relevant to so many readers, Brownstein (English, Brooklyn Coll. & CUNY Graduate Ctr.; Becoming a Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels) compares Austen's life to contemporaries such as Lord Byron and explores how her novels have been interpreted and used by later writers. Brownstein's interpretations of Austen's novels, letters, and juvenilia are fresh and frequently illuminating. While she pays attention to all of Austen's novels, she focuses most heavily on Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Devotees of Austen's other novels may feel slighted, but the two novels do act as natural contrasts. Pride and Prejudice is the most frequently adapted and probably the best-loved of Austen's novels, while Austen expected that she herself would be the only person to like the title character of Emma. Brownstein dissects film and television adaptations, charting the changing perceptions of the novelist and the novels, and explores the industry of "fake" Austen fiction as well.