"Northanger Abbey"(01 of10)
Open Image ModalCatherine is just a normal, healthy 17-year-old, plain, provincial, and naïve, when she gets plucked out of her large family to keep a tedious woman company in a vacation spot. There she is introduced to a clever young man who likes her because she admires him. Due to a misunderstanding, she gets moved to the kind of spooky houses she reads about in novels, but danger is averted and she finds perfect happiness in the end. Romance or anti-romance? Critics are divided.
"Sense and Sensibility"(02 of10)
Open Image ModalWhen 37-year-old Emma Thompson played 19-year-old Elinor Dashwood in her (and Ang Lee's) gorgeous 1995 film, that heroine's stock went up--a cause for applause, surely. But Janeites are keen on personal distinction, and there have always been those who claim Elinor or her effusive younger sister Marianne as their favorite--and who call this first novel Jane Austen published, which takes a dim view of the possibility of perfect happiness, her most characteristic work.
"Mansfield Park"(03 of10)
Open Image ModalThe story of Fanny Price is a study of the horrors of family life and personal relationships (and a strikingly non-erotic love story). The usual motives are rounded up and probed: greed, venality, tyranny, stupidity, laziness, and both casual and deliberate cruelty. The critic Edward Said located the stately home called Mansfield Park as the heart of English Orientalism; in her 1999 film, Patricia Rozema represented "Mansfield Park" as a hotbed of perverse sexuality.
"Lady Susan"(04 of10)
Open Image ModalIf you think Jane Austen is always all about virtuous virgins who aim to marry men with big houses, take a long look at this short one: Lady Susan is a middle-aged widow, a scheming serial seducer who ruins marriages for the fun of it and hates her marriageable daughter. The author beautifully wrote out a fair copy of this uncharacteristic novel in letters, but she never sent it to a publisher.
"Sanditon"(05 of10)
Open Image ModalSome readers--Virginia Woolf, for one--have seen "Sanditon," a fragment of an unfinished novel, as the promise of a new direction for Jane Austen. Set in a seaside resort, the action begins with a road accident and the story seems poised to give equal attention to all four unmarried members of a family of hypochondriacs. There are interesting earlier fragments, as well: see also "Catharine, or The Bower," and "The Watsons," both of which query the conventions of the marriage plot.
Her poetry(06 of10)
Open Image ModalIf you think of Jane Austen as a writer of prose rather than poetry, check out the rollicking verses she wrote about the weather and the traditional races at Winchester as she lay dying in that city: she composed them, astonishingly, days before her death at 41. "Behold me Immortal," Saint Swithin says in the poem: does he speak for her? Does she claim immortality as a writer or as a Christian soul? See also, for a surprising kind of prose, the three prayers Jane Austen wrote that her family saved. (credit:Flickr/randwill)
"History of England, By a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian"(07 of10)
Open Image ModalTurns out that from girlhood she wrote non-fiction as well as fiction. A striking example is her "History of England, By a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian," which is also the only one of her works that was illustrated in her lifetime. (Her sister, Cassandra, supplied the miniature watercolor portraits of the men--and women--in this true story.) Read it and decide whether religion or politics, feminism or a romantic turn of mind, made Jane Austen admire Mary Queen of Scots.
"Henry and Eliza"(08 of10)
Open Image Modal"Henry and Eliza" is another early work. Jane Austen's brother, Henry, married their lively cousin, Eliza, a widow ten years older than he--but that didn't happen until many years after Jane wrote this story. A good example of the youthful stories that some scholars pedantically call "the juvenilia," this one features a feisty heroine who finds out her children are "rather hungry" when they bite off two of her fingers.
Her letters(09 of10)
Open Image ModalMost of the letters Jane Austen wrote have been lost; most of the ones we have were written to her older sister Cassandra (who destroyed a big batch of them). Here is an example of the kind of gossip the sisters enjoyed: "There were very few Beauties, & such as there were, were not very handsome. Miss Iremonger did not look well, & Mrs. Blount was the only one much admired. She appeared exactly as she did in September, with the same broad face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink husband, & fat neck.--The two Miss Coxes were there; I traced in one the remains of the vulgar, broad featured girl who danced at Enham eight years ago; ....--I looked at Sir Thomas Champneys & thought of poor Rosalie; I looked at his daughter & thought her a queer animal with a white neck.--Mrs. Warren, I was constrained to think a very fine young woman, which I much regret. She has got rid of some part of her child, & danced away with great activity, looking by no means very large.--Her husband is ugly enough; uglier even than his cousin John; but he does not look so very old."
The film adaptations of her novels(10 of10)
Open Image ModalFinally, in the case of Jane Austen the old saw is really true: when you reread one of her novels, either before or after seeing a good adaptation, you always discover something new.