Jane Austen: influences, peers and legacy

Every connection with its receipt

Jane Austen wrote from inside a dense web of eighteenth-century print culture: Richardson's epistolary marriage plots, Burney's and Edgeworth's novels of female manners, Gothic bestsellers she gleefully parodied, and the conduct literature of her Hampshire gentry world. This mix traces the books she demonstrably read and reworked, the local and cross-medium currents around Chawton and Bath, and the long line of successors from Gaskell to Fielding.

The Kynda mix for Jane Austen

• Key Influence · The History of Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson (1753). Austen's family knew this novel intimately; her nephew's memoir records that she could recall its details minutely, and she adapted it into a short domestic play, 'Sir Charles Grandison, or The Happy Man', preserved in manuscript. Richardson's minute anatomy of courtship, propriety and the marriage decision underpins Austen's method — free indirect judgement of manners rather than incident — and Grandison is name-checked in 'Northanger Abbey'.
• Influencia Obscura · The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox (1752). Lennox's heroine Arabella reads French heroic romance until she mistakes gardeners for disguised princes — the direct structural ancestor of Catherine Morland. Austen's letters mention the novel with approval, and the Quixote-in-petticoats device of a mind deformed by genre recurs throughout her work, from Marianne Dashwood's sensibility to Emma Woodhouse's imagined romances for other people.
• Local Roots · The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne by Gilbert White (1789). White was curate of Selborne, a few miles from Steventon and Chawton, and his parish-scale attention to a small patch of Hampshire is the non-fictional twin of Austen's '3 or 4 families in a country village'. The Austens moved in the same clerical-gentry Hampshire networks; White's book fixed the county's lanes, hedgerows and seasonal rounds as a subject worth minute prose.
• Beyond the Medium · Marriage A-la-Mode by William Hogarth (1743). Hogarth's six-canvas satire of a mercenary aristocratic match — settlement negotiated over documents, ruin following — is the visual grammar behind Austen's economics of courtship: entails, jointures, ten thousand a year. Widely reproduced as engravings in eighteenth-century gentry households, this narrative-in-pictures method of reading character through furniture, posture and dress parallels Austen's technique.
• Peer · Waverley by Walter Scott (1814). Austen read it and joked in a letter that Scott, already a great poet, had no business writing novels and taking bread from other people's mouths. Scott returned the favour anonymously in the Quarterly Review of 1816, praising 'Emma' for its exact copying of ordinary life — the first serious critical account of her realism, from the contemporary who dominated the market she worked in.
• From the Canon · Emma by Jane Austen (1815). The fullest demonstration of Austen's method: a heroine whose errors the reader sees through her own narration, sustained by free indirect discourse across a village of Highbury bores, invalids and secret engagements. Dedicated, at the Prince Regent's librarian's prompting, to the Prince Regent, and singled out by Scott's 1816 review as the model of the new realist novel.
• Key Collaborator · A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (1869). Her nephew's memoir is the founding document of Austen's fame: it first printed 'Lady Susan', fragments of 'Sanditon' and 'The Watsons', and the family's account of her writing at a small table amid interruptions. Written with contributions from his sisters Anna Lefroy and Caroline Austen, it created the gentle 'dear Aunt Jane' image that Austen studies has been arguing with ever since.
• Legacy · Middlemarch by George Eliot (1872). Eliot's provincial 'study' extends Austen's method to a whole town: marriage as an economic and moral trap, irony administered through a narrator moving in and out of characters' consciousness. Eliot and G. H. Lewes read Austen closely — Lewes was among her most influential Victorian champions, urging novelists to learn from her dramatic economy — and Middlemarch is the result at epic scale.

What influenced Jane Austen

• Samuel Richardson. Wikipedia prose states Austen's style returned the novel to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding. (also via Pamela, The History of Sir Charles Grandison) “returning the novel on a "slender thread" to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding for a "realistic study of manners"” (Wikipedia)
• A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792). Scholar Anne K. Mellor identifies Wollstonecraft's influence on Austen's novels. (also via Pride and Prejudice) “Jane Austen never mentioned her by name, but several of her novels contain positive allusions to Wollstonecraft's work” (Wikipedia)
• Henry Fielding. Wikipedia prose states Austen's style returned the novel to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding. “returning the novel on a "slender thread" to the tradition of Richardson and Fielding for a "realistic study of manners"” (Wikipedia)
• The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794). The Mysteries of Udolpho (Ann Radcliffe) — titan for Jane Austen “The earliest English novelists, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett, were followed by the school of sentimentalists and romantics such as Sir Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, and Oliver Goldsmi…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Cecilia by Frances Burney (1782). Cecilia (Frances Burney) — titan for Jane Austen “She has gained critical respect in her own right, but she foreshadowed such novelists of manners with a satirical bent as Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Eliza Hancock. Biographer Le Faye states Philadelphia and Eliza Hancock's lifestyle influenced Austen's later life and works. “the news of their foreign travels and fashionable London life, together with their sudden descents upon the Steventon household in between times, all helped to widen Jane's youthful horizon and influence her later life and works” (Wikipedia)
• Pamela by Samuel Richardson. States Austen attempted the epistolary style used in Richardson's Pamela. “Austen attempted Richardson's epistolary style, but found the flexibility of narrative more conducive to her realism” (Wikipedia)
• Original Stories from Real Life by Mary Wollstonecraft. Original Stories from Real Life (Mary Wollstonecraft) — ghost for Jane Austen “The poet Anna Seward admired Wollstonecraft and was largely positive towards Godwin's Memoirs, writing in 1798: "Bearing strong marks of impartial authenticity as to the character, sentiments, conduct, and destiny of a very extraordinary…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The History of Sir Charles Grandison by Samuel Richardson (1753). The History of Sir Charles Grandison (Samuel Richardson) — titan for Jane Austen “This was a short parody of various school textbook abridgements of Austen's favourite contemporary novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753) by Samuel Richardson.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Laurence Sterne. Scholar Richard Jenkyns compares Austen's Juvenilia to the work of Laurence Sterne. “he compares them to the work of the 18th-century novelist Laurence Sterne” (Wikipedia)
• Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (1801). Belinda (Maria Edgeworth) — ghost for Jane Austen “Edgeworth was an extremely popular author who was compared with her contemporary writers Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Marriage A-la-Mode by William Hogarth (1743). Marriage A-la-Mode (William Hogarth) — culture for Jane Austen (wikidata.org)
• The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox (1752). The Female Quixote (Charlotte Lennox) — ghost for Jane Austen (openlibrary.org)
• Samuel Johnson (1709). States Samuel Johnson's influence is evident in Austen's comic writing philosophy.
• Cowper: The Task by William Cowper (1785). Cowper: The Task (William Cowper) — culture for Jane Austen

Peers and kindred spirits

• A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (1869). A Memoir of Jane Austen (James Edward Austen-Leigh) — collaborator for Jane Austen “The publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 introduced Austen's life story to a wider public as "dear aunt Jane", the respectable maiden aunt.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Castle Rackrent by Maria Edgeworth (1800). Castle Rackrent (Maria Edgeworth) — peer for Jane Austen “Edgeworth was an extremely popular author who was compared with her contemporary writers Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Lucile Watson (1879). Establishes Lucile Watson's prior role in the play Pride and Prejudice. (via Pride and Prejudice) “and of “Pride and Prejudice” and don modern clothes as an ultra-modern” (The Washington Daily News (Washington, D.C.))
• John Murray. States John Murray published Emma in 1815. (via Emma) “who published Emma in December 1815 and a second edition of Mansfield Park in February 1816” (Wikipedia)
• Thomas Egerton. States Thomas Egerton published Pride and Prejudice. (via Pride and Prejudice) “Egerton then published Pride and Prejudice , a revision of First Impressions , in January 1813.” (Wikipedia)
• The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne by Gilbert White (1789). The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (Gilbert White) — geography for Jane Austen (openlibrary.org)
• Sir Charles Grandison; or, The Happy Man by Anna Lefroy (1800). Sir Charles Grandison; or, The Happy Man (Anna Lefroy) — collaborator for Jane Austen “Anna Lefroy (née Jane Anna Elizabeth Austen; 1793–1872) was the niece of Jane Austen by her eldest brother James Austen, and a contributor to her life-history via the so-called Lefroy MS.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Rivals by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1775). The Rivals (Richard Brinsley Sheridan) — geography for Jane Austen (wikidata.org)
• Waverley by Walter Scott (1814). Waverley (Walter Scott) — peer for Jane Austen “The earliest English novelists, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Tobias Smollett, were followed by the school of sentimentalists and romantics such as Sir Walter Scott, Horace Walpole, Clara Reeve, Ann Radcliffe, and Oliver Goldsmi…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Mary Shelley (1797). The Last Man's contemporary: Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen) — peer for Mary Shelley (via The Last Man's contemporary: Northanger Abbey)

Who Jane Austen influenced

• Toni Morrison (1931). States Jane Austen was among Morrison's favorite authors as a child, indicating early literary influence. “She read frequently as a child; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy.” (Wikipedia)
• Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (1853). Cranford (Elizabeth Gaskell) — legacy for Jane Austen “Her obvious depth of feeling was evident, while her turn of phrase and description was described as the greatest since Jane Austen.” (en.wikipedia.org)
• Middlemarch by George Eliot (1872). Middlemarch (George Eliot) — legacy for Jane Austen “=== 19th century === Because Austen's novels did not conform to Romantic and Victorian expectations that "powerful emotion [be] authenticated by an egregious display of sound and colour in the writing", some 19th-century critics preferre…” (en.wikipedia.org)
• The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu. Reviewers compared Genji's literary quality to that of Austen. “reviewers compared Genji to Austen, Proust, and Shakespeare” (Wikipedia)
• Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding (1996). Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding) — legacy for Jane Austen (openlibrary.org)
• Mindy Kaling (1979). Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) — culture for Mindy Kaling (via Pride and Prejudice) (openlibrary.org)
• Jane Gardam. Emma (Jane Austen) — titan for Jane Gardam (via Emma) (openlibrary.org)