First Austen Reports:

Short reports on Austen's juvenilia, literature, society, and politics of her youth.

Choose one of the unclaimed topics shown on the website below (or one of your own invention) and clear your choice with me by conversation or e-mail. Research your topic's relevance to this class and prepare a one-page handout for your fellow-students on your topic. The handout should summarize the main names, terms, dates, sources, or other memorable facts of your topic. Include maps, graphics, tables, or whatever helps clarify your topic. In your own prose be concise and original. Be sure the handout includes a brief bibliographic note of at least one good print and one online source (standard form of citation, see Chicago Manual of Style). Bring 20 copies to distribute in class on Monday, September 21st.

Then write up the results in a brief essay of three or four pages with a list of sources consulted, due in class Monday, September 21st. 

I will finally ask you to give an overall rating to each report, including your own.

Popular Literature of Jane Austen's Youth:

The picaresque novel in English and other literary influences

English Satire, 1750-1800, Gillray, Rowlandson, Combe.

Susanna Centlivre's The Wonder: a Woman Keeps a Secret (1714)

John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728)

James Thomson's The Seasons (1730)

Henry Fielding's The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (1731)

Samuel Johnson's Rambler essays (1750-1752)

James Townley's High Life Below Stairs (1759)

Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766)

George Robinson and The Lady's Magazine (1770-1772)

Isaac Bickerstaff's The Sultan, or A Peep into the Seraglio (1775)

Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets (1779)

Hannah Cowley's The Belle's Stratagem (1780) and Which is the Man? (1783)

Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne (1789) and English Nature Writing

James Austen's The Loiterer (1789-1790)

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).  And see Northanger Abbey (NCE) pp. 222-25

Jane West's A Gossip's Story (1796)

Charlotte Smith, William Lisle Bowles, and the Sonnet Revival

Bishop Thomas Percy, F. J. Child, and the Ballad Revival

Maria Edgeworth

Fanny Burney, esp. Evelina (1778)

Early Reviews of Northanger Abbey (NCE) pp. 243-63.

 

Jane Austen's Juvenilia:

The Three Sisters: a Novel (1792) (OWC) pp. 55-67.

Catherine, or the Bower (1792) in Northanger Abbey (NCE) pp. 206-12, (OWC) pp. 186-229.

Frederic and Elfrida: a Novel () (OWC) pp. 3-10.

Jack and Alice: a Novel () (OWC) pp. 11-26.

Henry and Eliza: a Novel () (OWC) pp. 31-6.

Lesley Castle: an Unfinished Novel in Letters (1792) (OWC) pp. 107-33.

History of England and other Scraps (1791) And see Northanger Abbey (NCE) pp. 197-206; (OWC) pp. 134-44.

 

Social Conditions:  see the general articles as well

Meals and Food

Roads and Transportation

Letters, Letter-writing, the Post, and Newspapers

Abbey House School and Institutions of Primary Education and  the Education of Women

The Situation of Children in Middle Class England

Medicine, Illness, and Disease

The English Country House

Money, Finance, and Banking in the 18th C. 

Circulating Libraries and the "Reading Public"

A Young Lady's "Coming Out" in 1788

Jane Austen's Journeys and Residences

The Gothic Revival in Art and Architecture

The Grand Tour

Bath Society

Agriculture in Austen's England

Polite Dress and Costume

The English Country Church and Clergy

The Culture of Dissent: Unitarians, Deists, and other Nonconformists

English Universities and the Education of Women

Army and Navy Life

Ranks and Titles in Aristocracy, Church, and Military

London Cultural Life during the Season

Printers, Booksellers, and Literary Journals

Eighteenth Century English Landscape and Gardening

 

Politics:

Edmund Burke and English Conservativism

Stirrings of Reform in Westminster

Ministers and Parties in Parliament

Monarchy and its Cultural Significance

Abolition and the Slave Trade

The British in the West Indies, 1750-1815

England during the Napoleonic Wars