Austen’s late-nineteenth-century afterlives: 1890s introductions to her novels

This essay focuses on introductions to editions of Austen’s texts published in the 1890s. By the late nineteenth century, Austen’s popularity and status as an author of canonical texts was beyond doubt. While illustrations to the various competing editions have received critical attention in recent decades, the other main paratext, introductions, have largely gone unacknowledged, yet deserve attention both because of their cultural significance and in their own right as critical engagements with the novels. The introduction writers were men of some standing whose contributions added weight to Austen’s texts. Their emphases on realism and humour in particular, as well as the predominant view of the author as a female genius whose art - especially her satire - had a masculine quality, but without ever seeing her as overstepping female boundaries, would have influenced many thousands of readers’ engagement with Austen’s texts.