Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen

By (author) Jocelyn Harris

Publication date:

03 August 2017

Length of book:

388 pages

Publisher

Bucknell University Press

ISBN-13: 9781611488395

In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, Jocelyn Harris argues that Jane Austen was a satirist, a celebrity-watcher, and a keen political observer. In Mansfield Park, she appears to base Fanny Price on Fanny Burney, criticize the royal heir as unfit to rule, and expose Susan Burney’s cruel husband through Mr. Price. In Northanger Abbey, she satirizes the young Prince of Wales as the vulgar John Thorpe; in Persuasion, she attacks both the regent’s failure to retrench, and his dangerous desire to become another Sun King. For Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Austen may draw on the actress Dorothy Jordan, mistress of the pro-slavery Duke of Clarence, while her West Indian heiress in Sanditon may allude to Sara Baartman, who was exhibited in Paris and London as “The Hottentot Venus,” and adopted as a test case by the abolitionists. Thoroughly researched and elegantly written, this new book by Jocelyn Harris contributes significantly to the growing literature about Austen’s worldiness by presenting a highly particularized web of facts, people, texts, and issues vital to her historical moment.

The energy and insight in all three volumes demonstrate just how exciting Austen remains. Eighteenth centuryists should give thanks every day that she wrote in our era, for she is currently the gateway drug to the Long Eighteenth-Century, as also to classic British literature. These writers and these publications inspire me to go back to texts, renovate my ideas, and get busy writing more books and articles. I predict that they will do the same for you.