Jane Austen

Jane Austen is very resistant to being classified as part of a literary "school", or being placed in any customarily-defined literary period -- partly because none of the obvious available terms, "18th-century, "Romantic", or "Victorian", would appropriately describe her. Almost all of the major figures who were literarily active in the period 1800-1837, and who are currently deemed worthy of remembering (i.e. are "canonized"), fall into one of a few categories -- either they launched their literary careers before 1800 (Burney, Edgeworth); or they were part of the Romantic movement (or were more or less strongly influenced by romanticism, or wrote in self-conscious reaction to romanticism); or they did most of their writing and publishing after 1837 (e.g. Dickens). Jane Austen is the conspicuous exception who does not fit into any of these categories.

One subscriber to AUSTEN-L has reported not having an opportunity to study Austen in college for exactly this reason: the professor who taught the course on 18th-century literature didn't consider Jane Austen relevant to that course, and neither did the professor who taught the next in the sequence of literature "survey" courses (presumably on Romantic and/or Victorian literature) -- so that as a result, Jane Austen wasn't covered at all!

The following list defines many of the chronological or quasi-chronological terms relevant to Jane Austen's era:

"Eighteenth century" This obviously covers the years 1700-1799 (or the years 1701-1800, according to some pedantic definitions).On the one hand, Jane Austen was born in 1775; she does have similarities to some authors that are classified as "18th century"; starting in the mid-to-late 1780's she wrote short humorous pieces for her family, and early versions of three of her later novels; and one of her novels is set in 1798-1799. But she didn't sell a novel until 1803, her first actual publication was in 1811, and all of the novels whose first drafts had been written before 1800 were revised by her after 1809 before they were published -- so that her most important period of literary activity was 1810-1817, for which "18th century" doesn't seem to be a very accurate description (unless perhaps a loose "extended 18th century" is defined).

"Romantic" The term "Romantic" can be used in a general chronological sense (covering the late 18th century and the first half of the nineteenth century, the main heyday of romanticism); but it can only be used to describe individual artists if they were influenced significantly by romanticism -- which Jane Austen was not. ("Do not be angry with me for beginning another letter to you. I have read [Byron's] The Corsair, mended my petticoat, and have nothing else to do." -- Jane Austen, letter of March 5, 1814 to her sister Cassandra.)

"Victorian" Victoria acceded to the throne in 1837, was crowned 1838, and died in 1901. (Jane Austen died more than a year before Victoria was even born.)