Feminine Guardian of the Green Core. "Jane Austen and the Theatre" by Penny Gay, "Romantic Austen: Sexual Politics and the Literary Canon" by Clara Tuite and "Recreating Jane Austen" by John Wiltshire. [review]

Abstract

These three new books, all by Australian academics, offer notable contributions to Austen studies. Penny Gay's "Jane Austen and the Theatre" highlights Austen's strong liking for theatrical performances, and discusses how plays, some of them by now-obscure women playwrights, were important influences on her novels. John Wiltshire's "Recreating Jane Austen" is also concerned with questions of creative influence: how biographers engaged with Austen, how Austen responded to Shakespeare, and how film and television have appropriated Austen's works. Meanwhile, in "Romantic Austen", Clara Tuite examines both present and past, arguing that Austen's novels themselves, in tandem with Romantic and post-Romantic cultural developments, created their own canonical and hence dehistoricised status.