Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

A brilliant, illuminating reassessment of the life and work of Jane Austen that makes clear how Austen has been misread for the past two centuries and that shows us how she intended her books to be read, revealing, as well, how subversive and daring--how truly radical--a writer she was.

In this fascinating, revelatory work, Helena Kelly--dazzling Jane Austen authority--looks past the grand houses, the pretty young women, past the demure drawing room dramas and witty commentary on the narrow social worlds of her time that became the hallmark of Austen's work to bring to light the serious, ambitious, deeply subversive nature of this beloved writer. Kelly illuminates the radical subjects--slavery, poverty, feminism, the Church, evolution, among them--considered treasonous at the time, that Austen deftly explored in the six novels that have come to embody an age. The author reveals just how in the novels we find the real Jane Austen: a clever, clear-sighted woman of information, fully aware of what was going on in the world and sure about what she thought of it. We see a writer who understood that the novel--until then seen as mindless trash--could be a great art form and who, perhaps more than any other writer up to that time, imbued it with its particular greatness.

HELENA KELLY grew up in North Kent. She has taught classics and English Literature at the University of Oxford. She lives in Oxford with her husband and son.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781524732103
ISBN 10	1524732109
Title	Jane Austen, the Secret Radical
Author	Helena Kelly
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Knopf Publishing Group
Year published	2017-05-02
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.