This is your chance to read every word that Jane Austen wrote– not just her novels, but her earlier hilarious juvenilia, several unfinished fragments of novels, and the wonderful letters she wrote over her lifetime to her sister Cassandra. This great writer’s work will be examined in relation to both her biography and the historical period in which she lived and wrote. We will analyze Austen’s characteristic style and techniques, in order to gain an enhanced appreciation of her writing—its intelligence, its wit, and its themes. Because she was a serious satirist, we will also discuss her moral values, and in the process, become more familiar with the culture of eighteenth-century England and the place of women–and art–in it.
