“The First of the Modern English Novelists”: Engagements with Jane Austen in the Early Twentieth-Century English Novel

Abstract

This dissertation, ‘“The First of the Modern English Novelists”,’ investigates the impact of the works of Jane Austen on the early twentieth century English novel. The period saw an unprecedented rise in popular interest in Austen’s works and her canonization as a major English literary classic, which has been well-documented; Austen’s reception by writers in the period, however, has received very little attention. The dissertation shows that quite diverse novelists between c. 1910 and 1940 drew on an Austenian tradition as part of their larger efforts at formal innovation. The nature of this engagement with Austen, which was both transformative and generative, is explored through readings of the fictional and critical works of three novelists from the period who are united not merely by an admiration of Austen’s works but also the shared goal of developing literary forms that were leaner and more precise than those they perceived their Victorians predecessors as having used: in purported contrast to the Victorians, they found in Austen’s works a model for the dramatic dialogue, precise characterization, and narrative economy to which they aspired in their quest for a new style. The first chapter of the dissertation focusses on E. M. Forster’s Howards End (1910), which I examine in the context of Forster’s conceptualization of voice and literary character in his course of lectures, Aspects of the Novel (1927), which partially relies on his reading of Austen, as well as his extensive critical writing on Austen’s novels. The second chapter is devoted to Elizabeth Bowen’s second novel, The Last September (1929); drawing again on the writer’s highly substantial (and previously disregarded) body of critical writing on Austen and the art of fiction, the chapter shows how Bowen’s modernist exploration of Anglo-Irish identities both in style and subject matter draws on the model of Austen, specifically that of her novel, Pride and Prejudice. The third of these core chapters investigates Austen’s influence on the ‘dialogue novels’ of Ivy Compton-Burnett. Compton-Burnett did not produce the kind of critical writing left behind by Forster and Bowen, nor does Austen’s influence manifest itself in a single work. The chapter therefore explores a selection of her early novels that show traces of a particularly intense engagement with Austen, who frequently features as a topic of discussion among Compton-Burnett’s characters: Pastors and Masters (1925), Men and Wives (1931), and A House and its Head (1935). Across these works, Austen serves as a touchstone for commentary on the nature and status of the novel as a genre, while also providing Compton-Burnett with a model for her own particular brand of fictional dialogue. For all these novelists, Austen serves as a formative but transitional influence on their early oeuvre that helps them develop what will become their own distinctive literary styles.