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Hardcore bibliography meets Antiques Roadshow in an illustrated
exploration of the role that cheap reprints played in Jane Austen's
literary celebrity-and in changing the larger book world itself.
Gold Winner of the 2019 Foreword INDIES Award for History by
FOREWORD Reviews In the nineteenth century, inexpensive editions of
Jane Austen's novels targeted to Britain's working classes were
sold at railway stations, traded for soap wrappers, and awarded as
school prizes. At just pennies a copy, these reprints were some of
the earliest mass-market paperbacks, with Austen's beloved stories
squeezed into tight columns on thin, cheap paper. Few of these
hard-lived bargain books survive, yet they made a substantial
difference to Austen's early readership. These were the books
bought and read by ordinary people. Packed with nearly 100
full-color photographs of dazzling, sometimes gaudy, sometimes
tasteless covers, The Lost Books of Jane Austen is a unique history
of these rare and forgotten Austen volumes. Such shoddy editions,
Janine Barchas argues, were instrumental in bringing Austen's work
and reputation before the general public. Only by examining them
can we grasp the chaotic range of Austen's popular reach among
working-class readers. Informed by the author's years of
unconventional book hunting, The Lost Books of Jane Austen will
surprise even the most ardent Janeite with glimpses of scruffy
survivors that challenge the prevailing story of the author's
steady and genteel rise. Thoroughly innovative and occasionally
irreverent, this book will appeal in equal measure to book
historians, Austen fans, and scholars of literary celebrity.
Comprises a variety of topics, from prostitution to flatulence, and
paints a picture of the real and imaginative worlds inhabited by
the people of eighteenth-century Britain. This title features a
volume dedicated to homosexuality. It is intended for students of
eighteenth century culture, queer theory, history of sexuality and
book history.
The uniformity of the eighteenth-century novel in today's
paperbacks and critical editions no longer conveys the early
novel's visual exuberance. Janine Barchas explains how during the
genre's formation in the first half of the eighteenth century, the
novel's material embodiment as printed book rivalled its narrative
content in diversity and creativity. Innovations in layout,
ornamentation and even punctuation found in, for example, the
novels of Richardson, an author who printed his own books, help
shape a tradition of early visual ingenuity. From the beginning of
the novel's emergence in Britain, prose writers including Daniel
Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and Henry and Sarah Fielding experimented
with the novel's appearance. Lavishly illustrated with more than
100 graphic features found in eighteenth-century editions, this
important study aims to recover the visual context in which the
eighteenth-century novel was produced and read.
In Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and
Celebrity, Janine Barchas makes the bold assertion that Jane
Austen's novels allude to actual high-profile politicians and
contemporary celebrities as well as to famous historical figures
and landed estates. Barchas is the first scholar to conduct
extensive research into the names and locations in Austen's fiction
by taking full advantage of the explosion of archival materials now
available online. According to Barchas, Austen plays confidently
with the tension between truth and invention that characterizes the
realist novel. Of course, the argument that Austen deployed famous
names presupposes an active celebrity culture during the Regency, a
phenomenon recently accepted by scholars. The names Austen plucks
from history for her protagonists (Dashwood, Wentworth, Woodhouse,
Tilney, Fitzwilliam, and many more) were immensely famous in her
day. She seems to bank upon this familiarity for interpretive
effect, often upending associations with comic intent. Barchas
re-situates Austen's work closer to the historical novels of her
contemporary Sir Walter Scott and away from the domestic and
biographical perspectives that until recently have dominated Austen
studies. This forward-thinking and revealing investigation offers
scholars and ardent fans of Jane Austen a wealth of historical
facts, while shedding an interpretive light on a new aspect of the
beloved writer's work.
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