Contest for Cultural Authority: Hazlitt, Coleridge and the Distresses of the Regency Book

This is a collection of essays by Austen scholars, a few of which are very academic (including an analysis of Austen's style using a mathematical computer program), but is generally accessible to the general reader. There are analysis of Austen's whole oeuvre, including her short fictions, unfinished novels and letters, discussions about the historical and social backgrounds of her novels, and even speculations about the earlier versions of some of her most famous novels. I find the latter, an essay by Margaret Ann Doody, one of the most interesting in this book. We know that there were earlier prototypes of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey that did not survive. Doody speculated, based on the short fictions that Austen wrote in her twenties, that these prototypes might have been substantially different from the finished novels that are familiar to us. When she first wrote those novels, Austen was a writer in the edgier, more satirical mold of Fielding and Dr. Johnson. The changing social mores at the beginning of the Regency compelled her to tone down her style so that her novels might be considered suitable reading matter for the increasingly conventional public. I have no idea whether this is a valid speculation, but it is tantalizing nevertheless to imagine what these earlier prototypes might be like. Another fascinating fact that I learned is that, although most modern day 'Janeites' are female, there were bands of them that were exclusively male during the First World War. They were soldiers who were fighting in the trenches in Europe and were recommended Austen's books as a soothing balm for their jangled nerves. I wonder what Miss Austen would have thought about that.