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Jane Austen the Reader explains Austen´s excellence and endurance by showing how her writing developed as a response to the writing of others: as parody, satire, criticism and even, on occasion, homage. Seeing Austen as a critic offers new insights into her creativity, and new interpretations of her novels.

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List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Jane Austen the Reader 1. Jane Austen, Criticism and the Novel in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries 2. What´s not in Austen? Critical Quixotry in Love and Freindship and Northanger Abbey 3. Texts and Pretexts: Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice 4. Reading Criticism in Mansfield Park 5. Emma and the ´Plan of a Novel´ 6. Persuasion and the Last Works 7. Appendix: What Happened to Jane Austen´s Books? Notes Bibliography Index

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"...a valuable addition to what may be seen as the already well-mapped territory of Jane Austen´s literary influences... Murphy´s prose is lively, incisive, and stimulating. Jane Austen the Reader will be of interest not only to Austen scholars and enthusiasts but also to anyone interested in the history of the novel." Anne-Claire Michoux, The BARS Journal

"That Murphy has read an enormous amount in her pursuit of Austen´s creative critical methods is evident on every page. Not

only does the book bulge with paragraphs on Austen´s contemporaries, but also with reference to recent criticism. For a text running to fewer than 200 pages, it is astonishingly rich in material." Fiona Stafford, SHARP News

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Olivia Murphy is Lecturer in English at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

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