1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910959154303321

Autore

Bautz Annika

Titolo

The reception of Jane Austen and Walter Scott : a comparative longitudinal study / Annika Bautz

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London ; New York, : Continuum, 2007

ISBN

9786613202567

9781474211543

1474211542

9781283202565

1283202565

9781441108586

1441108580

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (209 p.)

Collana

Continuum reception studies

Disciplina

823.709

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages [183]-194) and index

Nota di contenuto

Introduction -- Part I: The Contemporary Response, 1811-1818 -- 1. Reviewing in the Romantic Period -- 2. Austen and Scott Reviewed, 1812 - 1818 -- 3. Private Readers' Responses in Letters and Diaries, 1811 - 1818 -- Part II: The Victorian Response -- 4. Editions, 1832 - 1912 -- 5. Library Catalogues, 1832 -1912 -- 6. Victorian Reviews and Criticism, 1865 - 1880 -- Part III: The Later-twentieth-century Response -- 7. Editions, 1913 - 2003 -- 8. Media reception and cultural status, 1900 - 2003 -- 6. Critical reception, 1960 - 2003 -- Retrospect -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index --

Sommario/riassunto

Of all the great novelists of the Romantic period, only two, Jane Austen and Walter Scott, have been continuously reprinted, admired, argued about, and read, from the moment their works first appeared until the present day.  In a pioneering study, Annika Bautz traces how Scott's nineteenth-century success among all classes of readers made him the most admired and most widely read novelist in history, only for his readership to plummet sharply downwards in the twentieth century. Austen's popularity, by contrast, has risen inexorably, overtaking



Scott's, and bringing about a reversal in reputation that would have been unthinkable in the authors' own time. To assess the reactions of readers belonging to diverse interpretative communities, Bautz draws on a wide range of indicators, including editions, publisher's relaunches, sales, reviews, library catalogues and lending figures, private comments in diaries and letters, popularisations. She maps out the long-run changes in the reception of each author over two centuries, explaining literary tastes and their determinants, and illuminating the broader culture of the successive reading audiences who gave both authors their uninterrupted loyalty. The first ever comparative longitudinal study, firmly based on empirical and archival evidence, this book will be of interest to scholars in Romanticism, Victorianism, book history, reading and reception studies, and cultural history.