Reading with Jane Austen

Jane Austen has more readers today than at any time in history. Many of Austen's legions of fans, however, came to her novels after first seeing films or other adaptations made for twenty-first-century audiences. Austen herself conversely spent her literary career undermining romantic clichés and rethinking novel conventions. Confident that she and her contemporaries shared a common reading culture, Austen deliberately constructed her novels to set readerly expectations, only to disrupt or confound those expectations by challenging her readers' assumptions and values. In Reading with Jane Austen, Elaine Bander carefully rereads the great author's novels--beginning with her late work of juvenilia, "Catharine, or The Bower," and ending with her final fragment, "Sanditon"--against the rich context of late Georgian literary and intellectual culture. In doing so, Bander invites us into the transformative experience that Austen intentionally designed for her earliest readers, adding new layers of appreciation for those who love her work.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.


Author: Elaine Bander
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: 03/10/2026
Pages: 206
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781684485857


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/01/2026 pg. 60

About the Author

ELAINE BANDER is retired from Dawson College in Montreal, Canada, where she taught English for three decades. She is the author of dozens of essays and several book chapters on Austen and other writers and served as president of the Jane Austen Society of North America (Canada) as well as of the Burney Society (North America).