Jane Austen and the State of the Nation

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction: Jane Austen’s Legacy

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 1-19

3. Juvenilia: A Liberal Conservative

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 20-29

4. Sense and Sensibility: Poor Law Reform

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 30-47

5. Pride and Prejudice: The Speenhamland System

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 48-71

6. Northanger Abbey and The Watsons: The Restriction Act

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 72-87

7. Mansfield Park: The Condition of England

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 88-117

8. Emma: William Pitt’s Utopia

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 118-140

9. Persuasion: The Post-Waterloo Crash

   • Sheryl Craig

   Pages 141-155

10. Sanditon: A Political Novel

    • Sheryl Craig

    Pages 156-167

11. Back Matter

    Pages 168-183

    PDF

Jane Austen and the State of the Nation explores Jane Austen's references to politics and to political economics and concludes that Austen was a liberal Tory who remained consistent in her political agenda throughout her career as a novelist. Read with this historical background, Austen's books emerge as state-of-the-nation or political novels.

• Jane Austen
• politics
• political economics
• Georgian
• Regency
• history
• nineteenth-century novel
• history of literature
• novel
• British and Irish Literature

"Jane Austen and the State of the Nation will be of great interest to scholars and students alike for its admirable, deep delving into the domestic economic and English political world in which Austen and her fiction were so obviously immersed." Devoney Looser, Professor of English, Arizona State University, USA

Sheryl Craig is an Austen scholar with a PhD in nineteenth-century British literature from the University of Kansas. She has published dozens of articles on Jane Austen and has lectured on Austen at regional, national, and international meetings and conferences.

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