Reading Jane Austen, 2009

Reading Jane Austenexplores Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion against their historical and cultural backdrop to show precisely how Jane Austen sets out the core themes of British morality in her novels. Austen s period was arguably the most socially and politically tumultuous in England s history, and by replacing the novels in this remarkable era, Scheuermann sharply defines Austen s view of the social contract.

Introduction: 'Truths Universally Acknowledged' PART I: A MORAL TAPESTRY: MANSFIELD PARK 'The Real and Consistent Patron of the Selected Child' 'So Long as it be a German Play' 'If tenderness could ever be supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place' PART II: SOCIAL GRIDS: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, EMMA AND PERSUASION 'She had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance...seen any thing that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust - any thing that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits' 'She only demands from each of you either one thing very clever...or two things moderately clever - or three things very dull indeed' 'The advantage of maturity of mind, consciousness of right, and one independent fortune between them' PART III: POLITICS AND HISTORY The World of Jane Austen

MONA SCHEUERMANN Professor of English at Oakton Community College, USA. She has held visiting professorships at the University of Hamburg, the Free University of Berlin and the University of Berne. She is the author of Social Protest in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel; Her Bread to Earn: Women, Money, and Society from Defoe to Austen; and In Praise of Poverty.