LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD INTRODUCTION PART ONE:BIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND Chrondological Table 1 Character and Family Background 2 Religion Jane Austen and the Clergy Candour 3 Mysteries and Uncertainties 4 Juvenilia Love and Freindship Catharine Intervening Word PART TWO:LITERARY BACKGROUND 5 Augustan Sense and Sensibility Johnson and Conservative Reason:‘Rasselas’ Johnson and the Art of the Novel Cowper and sensibility 6 Literary Contemporaries:Isolation and Involvement 7 The Eighteenth-century Novel Daniel Defoe,1660-1731 Jonathan swift,1667-1745 Henry Fielding,1707-54 Fanny Burney,1752-1840 8 The Arts and the social Order Gilpin and the Picturesque 9 women in Life and Literature The Predicament of the Jane Austen Heroine PART THEREE:THE ART OF JANE AUSTEN 10 Characterization:Heroines and Heroes The Caricatures Minor Characters The Heroes Heroes and Heroines:Marriage and Money 11 The Construction of the Novels The Fable of the Starling Narrative Construction Settings:the Ritual Entertainments 12 Emma Frank Churchill Mr Knightley 13 Jane Austen's Place in English Fiction PART FOUR:REFERENCE SECTION Bibliography Short Biographies Jane Austen's Vocabulary Places Notes to Maps of Places in Jane Austen's Novels Notes to Maps of London and Bath INDEX