PART ONE:BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUNDChronological Table 2
1 Character and Family Background 7
2 Religion 16
Jane Austen and the Clergy 17
Candour 21
3 Mysteries and Uncertainties 23
4 Juvenilia 28
Love and Freindship 30
Evelyn 34
Catharine 36
Intervening Work 37
PART TWO:LITERARY BACKGROUND 41
5 Augustan Sense and Sensibility 41
Johnson and Conservative Reason:'Rasselas' 45
Johnson and the Art of the Novel 47
Cowper and Sensibility 51
6 Literary Contemporaries:Isolation and Involvement 58
7 The Eighteenth-century Novel 65
Daniel Defoe,1660-1731 66
Samuel Richardson,1689-1761 68
Jonathan Swift,1667-1745 73
Henry Fielding,1707-54 76
Fanny Burney,1752-1840 80
8 The Arts and the Social Order 87
Gilpin and the Picturesque 91
9 Women in Life and Literature 98
The Predicament of the Jane Austen Heroine 103
PART THREE:THE ART OF JANE AUSTEN 103
10 Characterization:Heroines and Heroes 109
The Caricatures 112
Minor Characters 115
The Heroines 115
The Heroes 119
Heroes and Heroines:Marriage and Money 121
11 The Construction of the Novels 123
The Fable of the Starling 123
Narrative Construction 126
Settings:the Ritual Entertainments 129
The Meaning of the Fable 131
12 Emma 133
Frank Churchill 142
Mr Knightley 144
13 Jane Austen's Place in English Fiction 149
PART FOUR:REFERENCE SECTION 165
Bibliography 165
Short Biographies 169
Jane Austen's Vocabulary 173
Places 176
Notes to Maps of Places in Jane Austen's Novels 180
Notes to Maps of London and Bath 183
INDEX 187