Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Professional Woman Writer
- 2 Northanger Abbey And Sense And Sensibility
- 3 Pride And Prejudice And Mansfield Park
- 4 Emma And Persuasion
- 5 The Early Short Fiction
- 6 ‘Lady Susan’, ‘The Watsons’ And ‘Sanditon’
- 7 The letters
- 8 Class
- 9 Money
- 10 Making a living
- 11 Gender
- 12 Sociability
- 13 Jane Austen and literary traditions
- 14 Jane Austen on screen
- 15 Austen cults and cultures
- 16 Further reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to . . .
5 - The Early Short Fiction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
- Frontmatter
- 1 The Professional Woman Writer
- 2 Northanger Abbey And Sense And Sensibility
- 3 Pride And Prejudice And Mansfield Park
- 4 Emma And Persuasion
- 5 The Early Short Fiction
- 6 ‘Lady Susan’, ‘The Watsons’ And ‘Sanditon’
- 7 The letters
- 8 Class
- 9 Money
- 10 Making a living
- 11 Gender
- 12 Sociability
- 13 Jane Austen and literary traditions
- 14 Jane Austen on screen
- 15 Austen cults and cultures
- 16 Further reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to . . .
Summary
In Jane Austen’s unfinished Catharine, or the Bower, found in the notebook Volume the Third, we hear silly Camilla Stanley and her mother gushing over Camilla’s correspondence with her friend Augusta:
‘You received a Letter from Augusta Barlow to day, did not you my Love? said her Mother –. She writes remarkably well I know.’
‘Oh! Yes Ma’am, the most delightful Letter you ever heard of. She sends me a long account of the new Regency walking dress Lady Susan has given her, and it is so beautiful that I am quite dieing with envy for it.’
‘Well, I am prodigiously happy to hear such pleasing news of my young freind; I have a high regard for Augusta, and most sincerely partake in the general Joy on the occasion. But does she say nothing else? it seemed to be a long Letter – Are they to be at Scarborough?’
‘Oh! Lord, she never once mentions it, now I recollect it; and I entirely forgot to ask her when I wrote last. She says nothing indeed except about the Regency,’ ‘She must write well thought Kitty, to make a long Letter upon a Bonnet and Pelisse.’
(J 263)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen , pp. 72 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010