Of all the great novelists of the Romantic period, only two, Jane Austen and Walter Scott, have been continuously reprinted, admired, argued about, and read, from the moment their works first appeared until the present day. In a pioneering study, Annika Bautz traces how Scott's nineteenth-century success among all classes of readers made him the most admired and most widely read novelist in history, only for his readership to plummet sharply downwards in the twentieth century. Austen's popularity, by contrast, has risen inexorably, overtaking Scott's, and bringing about a reversal in reputation that would have been unthinkable in the authors' own time. To assess the reactions of readers belonging to diverse interpretative communities, Bautz draws on a wide range of indicators, including editions, publisher's relaunches, sales, reviews, library catalogues and lending figures, private comments in diaries and letters, popularisations. She maps out the long-run changes in the reception of each author over two centuries, explaining literary tastes and their determinants, and illuminating the broader culture of the successive reading audiences who gave both authors their uninterrupted loyalty. The first ever comparative longitudinal study, firmly based on empirical and archival evidence, this book will be of interest to scholars in Romanticism, Victorianism, book history, reading and reception studies, and cultural history.

Austen After 200 explores our contemporary relationship with Jane Austen in the wake of the bicentenaries of her death and the first publication of her novels. The volume begins by looking at Austen's popular appeal and at how she is consumed today in diverse cultural venues such the digisphere, blogosphere, festivals and book clubs. It then offers new approaches to the novels within various critical contexts, including adaptation studies, fan fiction, intertextuality, and more. Collecting these new essays in one volume enables a unique view of the crossovers and divergences in engagements with Austen in different settings, and will help a comparative approach between the popular and the academic to emerge more fully in Austen studies. The book gathers insights from a range of contributors invested in new reading spaces in order to show the creative ways in which we are all adapting as we continue to read Austen's works.

This collection is concerned with the changing approaches to Jane Austen, her writings, and her afterlives, over the past two hundred years. It reflects on, and broadens understanding of, the cultural reach and reimaginings of Austen in view of the bicentennial celebrations of her published novels from 2011 to 2018. The ten contributors to this collection re-engage with key debates over Austen, her continuing appeal and significance as an author and a lucrative brand, and her cultural ubiquity. These essays are concerned with Austen's national and international reputation; her critical reception; creative appropriations of her writings; and Austen's afterlives in popular culture, in visual media, in ephemeral publications, in stage, in film, and in musical versions. Together, these essays by experts from across the UK, North America, Australia, and Scandinavia advance innovative readings of Austen's novels and her transmedia legacies and shed new light on some of the complex reception processes that emerge from the study of this enduringly popular author. They also set out possible paths for scholarship on Austen in coming years. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's Writing.

This Guide discusses the range of critical reactions to three of Jane Austen's most widely-studied and popular novels. Annika Bautz takes the reader chronologically through the profusion of criticism by selecting key approaches from the immense variety of responses these three Austen novels have provoked over the last two centuries.

This book makes an important contribution to transatlantic literary studies and an emerging body of work on identity formation and print culture in the Atlantic world. The collection identifies the ways in which historically-situated but malleable subjectivities engage with popular and pressing debates about class, slavery, natural knowledge, democracy, and religion. In addition, the book also considers the ways in which material texts and genres, including, for example, the essay, the guidebook, the travel narrative, the periodical, the novel, and the poem, can be scrutinized in relation to historically-situated transatlantic transitions, transformations, and border crossings. The volume is underpinned by a thorough examination of historical and conceptual frameworks and prioritizes notions of circulation and exchange, as opposed to transfer and continuance, in its analysis of authors, texts, and ideas. The collection is concerned with the movement of people, texts, and ideas in the currents of transatlantic markets and politics, taking a fresh look at a range of canonical and popular writers of the period, including Austen, Poe, Crevecoeur, Brockden Brown, Sedgwick, Hemans, Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens, and Melville. In different ways, the essays gathered together here are concerned with the potentially empowering realities of the transitive, circulatory, and contingent experiences of transatlantic literary and cultural production as they are manifest in the long nineteenth century.

This collection is concerned with the changing approaches to Jane Austen, her writings, and her afterlives, over the past two hundred years. It reflects on, and broadens understanding of, the cultural reach and reimaginings of Austen in view of the bicentennial celebrations of her published novels from 2011 to 2018. The ten contributors to this collection re-engage with key debates over Austen, her continuing appeal and significance as an author and a lucrative brand, and her cultural ubiquity. These essays are concerned with Austen's national and international reputation; her critical reception; creative appropriations of her writings; and Austen's afterlives in popular culture, in visual media, in ephemeral publications, in stage, in film, and in musical versions. Together, these essays by experts from across the UK, North America, Australia, and Scandinavia advance innovative readings of Austen's novels and her transmedia legacies and shed new light on some of the complex reception processes that emerge from the study of this enduringly popular author. They also set out possible paths for scholarship on Austen in coming years. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's Writing.

This volume concerns judges, judgment and judgmentalism. It studies the Victorians as judges across a range of important fields, including the legal and aesthetic spheres, and within literature. It examines how various specialist forms of judgment were conceived and operated, and how the propensity to be judgmental was viewed.

This book makes an important contribution to transatlantic literary studies and an emerging body of work on identity formation and print culture in the Atlantic world. The collection identifies the ways in which historically-situated but malleable subjectivities engage with popular and pressing debates about class, slavery, natural knowledge, democracy, and religion. In addition, the book also considers the ways in which material texts and genres, including, for example, the essay, the guidebook, the travel narrative, the periodical, the novel, and the poem, can be scrutinized in relation to historically-situated transatlantic transitions, transformations, and border crossings. The volume is underpinned by a thorough examination of historical and conceptual frameworks and prioritizes notions of circulation and exchange, as opposed to transfer and continuance, in its analysis of authors, texts, and ideas. The collection is concerned with the movement of people, texts, and ideas in the currents of transatlantic markets and politics, taking a fresh look at a range of canonical and popular writers of the period, including Austen, Poe, Crevecoeur, Brockden Brown, Sedgwick, Hemans, Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens, and Melville. In different ways, the essays gathered together here are concerned with the potentially empowering realities of the transitive, circulatory, and contingent experiences of transatlantic literary and cultural production as they are manifest in the long nineteenth century.

This book presents the collectors' roles as prominently as the collections of books and texts which they assembled. Contributors explore the activities and networks shaping a range of continental and transcontinental European public and private collections during the Renaissance, Enlightenment and modern eras. They study the impact of class, geographical location and specific cultural contexts on the gathering and use of printed and handwritten texts and other printed artefacts. The volume explores the social dimension of book collecting, and considers how practices of collecting developed during these periods of profound cultural, social and political change.

This volume concerns judges, judgment and judgmentalism. It studies the Victorians as judges across a range of important fields, including the legal and aesthetic spheres, and within literature. It examines how various specialist forms of judgment were conceived and operated, and how the propensity to be judgmental was viewed.

This book presents the collectors' roles as prominently as the collections of books and texts which they assembled. Contributors explore the activities and networks shaping a range of continental and transcontinental European public and private collections during the Renaissance, Enlightenment and modern eras. They study the impact of class, geographical location and specific cultural contexts on the gathering and use of printed and handwritten texts and other printed artefacts. The volume explores the social dimension of book collecting, and considers how practices of collecting developed during these periods of profound cultural, social and political change.