The novels of Jane Austen are typified by their comedic power, often most powerfully demonstrated by the singular voice of their narrators. Yet what makes them arresting novels can also produce a less than satisfactory transformation to the world of cinema, where the voice of a narrator often becomes obtrusive. This work argues that despite the difficulties in adapting Austen's writing for the screen, there have been many successes. Each author examines Austen's texts for their inherent cinematic features, analyzing the use of these features in film versions of the novels.

Persuasion is now probably the favourite Austen book after Pride and Prejudice. It tells the story of a life that might have been wasted, but is redeemed by love. It is a story by anyone who believes in second chances, or, in Tony Tanner's words "to anyone who has experienced the sense of an irreparably ruined owing to an irrevocable mistaken decision". While Pride and Prejudice was written when Austen was a young, marriageable woman, Persuasion was written when she was in her forties, and it features a heroine who, at twenty-seven, could in those days be destined, like Austen herself, to life as a spinster. As John Wiltshire, one of the best modern critics of Austen shows in this guide, the atmosphere of the two books is quite different, like the social world they depict - one "light and bright and sparkling" as Jane Austen herself called it, the other more sombre, shadowed by several deaths, and sometimes gentle and sometimes savage in its irony. But Persuasion has endeared itself to readers because the romance it celebrates takes place so convincingly within a constricting and believable social world. It's a love story for adults. Anne Elliot is quiet, accommodating, kind and thoughtful, but Jane Austen avoids making her a picture of perfection by inviting the reader into her consciousness. We see that she is watchful of herself, critical of herself, aware of her own self-deceptions, but at the same time subject to impulses and longings, to the dreams and sexual desires we all share.

Frances Burney is primarily known as a novelist and playwright, but in recent years there has been an increased interest in the medical writings found within her private letters and journals. John Wiltshire advocates Burney as the unconscious pioneer of the modern genre of pathography, or the illness narrative. Through her dramatic accounts of distinct medical events, such as her own infamous operation without anaesthetic, to those she witnessed, including the 'madness' of George III and the inoculation of her son against smallpox, Burney exposes the ethical issues and conflicts between patients and doctors. Her accounts are linked to a range of modern narratives in which similar events occur in the changed conditions of the public hospital. The genre that Burney initiated continues to make an important contribution to our understanding of medical practice in the modern world.

Jane Austen is a favorite with many students, whether they've read her novels or viewed popular film adaptations. But Persuasion (1817), completed at the end of her life, can be challenging for students to approach. They are surprised to meet a heroine so subdued and self-sacrificing, and the novel's setting during the Napoleonic Wars may be unfamiliar. This volume provides teachers with avenues to explore the depths and richness of the novel with both Austen fans and newcomers.Part 1, "Materials," suggests editions for classroom use, criticism, and multimedia resources. Part 2, "Approaches," presents strategies for teaching the literary, contextual, and philosophical dimensions of the novel. Essays address topics such as free indirect discourse and other narrative techniques; social class in Austen's England; the role of the navy during war and peacetime; key locations in the novel, including Lyme Regis and Bath; and health, illness, and the ethics of care.

In this major study, leading Austen scholar John Wiltshire offers new interpretations of Jane Austen's six novels, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1818). Much recent criticism of Austen has concentrated on the social, historical and intellectual context of her work, but Wiltshire turns attention back to Austen's prose techniques. Arguing that each of Austen's works has its own distinct focus and underlying agenda, he shows how Austen's interest in psychology, and especially her treatment of attention and the various forms of memory, helped shape her narratives. Through a series of compelling close readings of key passages in each novel, Wiltshire underscores Austen's unique ability to penetrate the hidden inner motives and impulses of her characters, and reveals some of the secrets of her narrative art.

Jane Austen has been read as a novelist of manners, whose work discreetly avoids discussing the physical. John Wiltshire shows, on the contrary, how important are faces and bodies in her texts, from complainers and invalids like Mrs Bennet and Mr Woodhouse, to the frail, debilitated Fanny Price, the vulnerable Jane Fairfax, and the 'picture of health', Emma. Talk about health and illness in the novels is abundant, and constitutes community, but it also serves to disguise the operation of social and gender politics. Behind the medical paraphernalia and incidents are serious concerns with the nature of power as exerted through and on the body, and with the manifold meanings of illness. 'Nerves', 'spirits', and sensibility figure largely in these books, and Jane Austen is seen to offer a critique of the gendering power of illness and nursing or attendance upon illness. Drawing both on modern - medical and feminist - theories of illness and the body as well as on eighteenth-century medical sources to illuminate the novels, this book offers new and controversial, but also scholarly, readings of these familiar texts.

Samuel Johnson has become known to posterity in two capacities: through his own works as the great literary essayist of the eighteenth century, and through Boswell's Life, as a man--notoriously a medical patient with a string of physical and psychological ailments. John Wiltshire brings the two together in this original study of Johnson the writer as "doctor" and patient. The subject of modern medical historians' case studies, Johnson also cultivated the acquaintance of doctors in his own day, and was himself a "dabbler in physic." Dr. Wiltshire illuminates Johnson's life and work by setting them in their medical context and also examines the importance of medical themes in Johnson's own writings. He discusses the many parts of Johnson's work touching on doctors, medicine, hospitals and medical experimentation, and analyzes the central theme, running throughout, of human suffering--in body and mind--and its alleviation.

In recent years, Mansfield Park has come to be regarded as Austen's most controversial novel. It was published in two editions in her lifetime and here the 1814 and 1816 texts are fully collated for the first time. All the variants are included on the page, allowing readers to see the differences between the first edition and the second, which include some important amendments made by Jane Austen herself. Also included, with a brief note on Elizabeth Inchbald, is the text of Lovers' Vows, the play around which much of the plot of Mansfield Park revolves. The volume provides comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, a chronology of Austen's life, and an authoritative textual apparatus. This edition is an indispensable resource for all scholars and readers of Austen.

Recreating Jane Austen is a book for readers who know and love Austen's work. Stimulated by the recent crop of film and television versions of Austen's novels, John Wiltshire examines how her work has been "recreated" in another age and medium. Written in an engaging and readable style, this accessible study approaches the central question of the role Jane Austen plays in the contemporary cultural imagination.

Recreating Jane Austen is a book for readers who know and love Austen's work. Stimulated by the recent crop of film and television versions of Austen's novels, John Wiltshire examines how her work has been "recreated" in another age and medium. Written in an engaging and readable style, this accessible study approaches the central question of the role Jane Austen plays in the contemporary cultural imagination.

Jane Austen has been read as a novelist of manners, whose work discreetly avoids discussing the physical. John Wiltshire shows, on the contrary, how important are faces and bodies in her texts, from complainers and invalids like Mrs Bennet and Mr Woodhouse, to the frail, debilitated Fanny Price, the vulnerable Jane Fairfax, and the 'picture of health', Emma. Talk about health and illness in the novels is abundant, and constitutes community, but it also serves to disguise the operation of social and gender politics. Behind the medical paraphernalia and incidents are serious concerns with the nature of power as exerted through and on the body, and with the manifold meanings of illness. 'Nerves', 'spirits', and sensibility figure largely in these books, and Jane Austen is seen to offer a critique of the gendering power of illness and nursing or attendance upon illness. Drawing both on modern - medical and feminist - theories of illness and the body as well as on eighteenth-century medical sources to illuminate the novels, this book offers new and controversial, but also scholarly, readings of these familiar texts.

Samuel Johnson has become known to posterity in two capacities: through his own works as the great literary essayist of the eighteenth century, and, through Boswell's Life, as a man - notoriously a medical patient with a string of physical and psychological ailments. John Wiltshire brings the two together in this 1991 study of Johnson the writer as 'Doctor' and patient. The subject of modern medical historians' case studies, Johnson also cultivated the acquaintance of doctors in his own day, and was himself a 'dabbler in physics'. John Wiltshire illuminates Johnson's life and work by setting them in their medical context, and also examines the importance of medical themes in Johnson's own writings. He discusses the many parts of Johnson's work touching on doctors, medicines, hospitals and medical experimentation, and analyses the central theme of human suffering - in body and mind - and its alleviation.

Jane Austen is a favorite with many students, whether they've read her novels or viewed popular film adaptations. But Persuasion (1817), completed at the end of her life, can be challenging for students to approach. They are surprised to meet a heroine so subdued and self-sacrificing, and the novel's setting during the Napoleonic Wars may be unfamiliar. This volume provides teachers with avenues to explore the depths and richness of the novel with both Austen fans and newcomers.Part 1, "Materials," suggests editions for classroom use, criticism, and multimedia resources. Part 2, "Approaches," presents strategies for teaching the literary, contextual, and philosophical dimensions of the novel. Essays address topics such as free indirect discourse and other narrative techniques; social class in Austen's England; the role of the navy during war and peacetime; key locations in the novel, including Lyme Regis and Bath; and health, illness, and the ethics of care.

There were no reviews of "Mansfield Park" when it first appeared in 1814. Austen's reputation grew in the Victorian period, but it was only in the twentieth century that formal and sustained criticism began of this work, which addresses the controversies of its time more than Austen's earlier novels did. Lionel Trilling praised "Mansfield Park" for exploring the difficult moral life of modernity; Edward Said brought postcolonial theory to the study of the novel; and twenty-first-century critics scrutinize these and other approaches to build on and go beyond them.

This volume is the third in the MLA Approaches series to deal with Austen's work ("Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma" were the subject of the first and second volumes on Austen, respectively). It provides information about editions, film adaptations, and digital resources, and then nineteen essays discuss various aspects of "Mansfield Park," including the slave trade, the theme of reading, elements of tragedy, gift theory, landscape design, moral improvement in the spirit of Samuel Johnson and of the Reformation, sibling relations, card playing, and interpretations of Fanny Price, the heroine, not as passive but as having some control.

There were no reviews of "Mansfield Park" when it first appeared in 1814. Austen's reputation grew in the Victorian period, but it was only in the twentieth century that formal and sustained criticism began of this work, which addresses the controversies of its time more than Austen's earlier novels did. Lionel Trilling praised "Mansfield Park" for exploring the difficult moral life of modernity; Edward Said brought postcolonial theory to the study of the novel; and twenty-first-century critics scrutinize these and other approaches to build on and go beyond them.

This volume is the third in the MLA Approaches series to deal with Austen's work ("Pride and Prejudice" and "Emma" were the subject of the first and second volumes on Austen, respectively). It provides information about editions, film adaptations, and digital resources, and then nineteen essays discuss various aspects of "Mansfield Park," including the slave trade, the theme of reading, elements of tragedy, gift theory, landscape design, moral improvement in the spirit of Samuel Johnson and of the Reformation, sibling relations, card playing, and interpretations of Fanny Price, the heroine, not as passive but as having some control.

In this major study, leading Austen scholar John Wiltshire offers new interpretations of Jane Austen's six novels, Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1818). Much recent criticism of Austen has concentrated on the social, historical and intellectual context of her work, but Wiltshire turns attention back to Austen's prose techniques. Arguing that each of Austen's works has its own distinct focus and underlying agenda, he shows how Austen's interest in psychology, and especially her treatment of attention and the various forms of memory, helped shape her narratives. Through a series of compelling close readings of key passages in each novel, Wiltshire underscores Austen's unique ability to penetrate the hidden inner motives and impulses of her characters, and reveals some of the secrets of her narrative art.

In recent years, Mansfield Park has come to be regarded as Austen's most controversial novel. It was published in two editions in her lifetime and here the 1814 and 1816 texts are fully collated for the first time. All the variants are included on the page, allowing readers to see the differences between the first edition and the second, which include some important amendments made by Jane Austen herself. Also included, with a brief note on Elizabeth Inchbald, is the text of Lovers' Vows, the play around which much of the plot of Mansfield Park revolves. The volume, first published in 2005, provides comprehensive explanatory notes, an extensive critical introduction covering the context and publication history of the work, a chronology of Austen's life and an authoritative textual apparatus.