I’ve read only two novels by Austen, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abby. I have Pride and Prejudice on my TBR pile. Dr. Mullan’s book is one of many scholarly works on Austen’s fiction. This one is told in an easy style that lets us be impressed by Austen’s mastery and invention, or the perfection, of so many literary techniques. This is especially impressive, as we learn that, unlike other well-known female novelists of her time, Austen never met any contemporary literary lights. Apart from her own extensive reading, she did this all on her own. Throughout the book, reference is made to Austen’s letters to various family members and friends, giving us a window into experiences that inspired some of her literary inventions. Austen lived much of the culture she wrote about.

Only the last two chapters directly address technique apart from the author’s subjects and stories: When does Jane Austen Speak Directly to the Reader, and How Experimental a Novelist is Jane Austen? All the rest of the chapters address Austen through her novel’s content. Marriage, money, literature (in the novels), dialogue among both primary and secondary characters, weather, names, illness, death, sex, and Austen’s use of the blush—male characters “color” they never blush. In young women, a blush can, but does not always, signal awakening to her own sexual allure. There is more besides. In Austen’s novels, apart from very few (except in Northanger Abby) “authorial interventions,” we see the whole of the story from the viewpoint of her characters. Sometimes the reader knows more than the characters, but often we are left to discover their misunderstandings as they discover them.  

All the Austen novels are used in every chapter, but in rough order of which are cited most often—this is my impression. I did not keep a formal tally—they are Emma, followed closely by Persuasion and Mansfield Park, then Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abby. Sanditon, an incomplete novel (completed by her brother after Jane’s death), is also cited frequently. Despite my lack of Austen scholarship, I found Mullan’s book easy to read and impressively informative. Highly recommended to Austen fans.