The Anonymous Jane Austen: Duelling Canons

This essay initially addresses some theoretical concepts such as adaptation and appropriation. I intend to analyze how Jane Austen herself indulged in her own appropriations from the woman’s canon, in particular through a story entitled Guilt Pursued by Conscience, a tale she found in the “Lady’s Magazine”of 1802. I will show that this tale that claimed Austen’s particular attention was re-appropriated in Emma (although in the broadest sense of parody) and, to a lesser extent, in Sense and Sensibility. The second part of the essay, instead, will move on to analyze how novelists of the generation that followed Austen felt free to import dialogue, characters, and plots from Austen’s works, showing no obligation to their source, just as she had done with the “Lady’s”tale. I will mention and comment on a series of novels, especially from the silver fork school, that draw from Austen’s plot, characters and happenings without acknowledging their legacy to their predecessor.