Jane Austen and the Art of the Novel

Abstract

This article aims to discuss Jane Austen’s relationship with the novel genre both as a reader and a writer. While there is no doubt about Austen’s immersion in the literary culture of her time, there is no substantial evidence about her conception of the novel: her comments on the genre in her correspondence are brief and incidental, if not humorous; her novels do not offer many clues; her “plan of a novel” is a satire; and she did not leave an essay on fiction in which she expounded the principles that guided her. Thus, there are only hints, small traces that the interested reader must track down in the entirety of her work. With luck, one can reconstruct what the art of the novel meant to Austen.