For Christmas, my lovely friend Christina got me a copy of the novel Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I've never read it, nor indeed any other of Austen's works, and I haven't seen any of the film or TV adaptations of it either, but the copy she bought me is an absolutely beautiful book (look! It has swans on! Or at least, I think they're swans... And it's gold! What's not to love?!) and Christina insisted that I simply had to read it because it would revolutionize the way I looked at love and I figured that since so so many people rave on about it, it can't be all that bad, so I'm reading it. And it is pretty interesting. It's not the first thing I would have picked up in a bookshop, so I'm glad it was given to me because there isn't much chance I'd have read it otherwise, and it's actually quite good. For something that was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it's still very readable, and the love story itself (yeah, I'm yet to finish it, but I'm pretty sure of exactly who is going to end up betrothed to whom...) is a fairly timeless one.
By which I mean to say, 'Thank you very much for this gift Christina, I'm actually enjoying it'. But I'm not an English student thank God not that they aren't completely lovely people; I just loathe most poetry and I have no idea how to analyse a text, so I couldn't tell you about the writing styles and the hidden metaphors and whatever else it is that write-y people bang on about. Not that you would want to read my analysis of a half-read book anyway. No, I'd much rather talk about the book's author, Jane Austen herself, as today in 1813 was the day the book I've been rambling on about was first published.
There are books and website a-plenty out there about her, so I'm not going to waste time filling you in on facts about her birth, death or daily life - instead, I'm going to attempt to put her writing into context: how, as a woman in the early nineteenth century, did you get published?
With great difficulty, it appears. Pride and Prejudice was not Austen's first published novel, and had in fact been a work in progress for many years prior to it's publishing, but when it finally went to print in 1813, it did so anonymously and only after Austen's brother, Henry, had persuaded Thomas Egerton to publish the novel. Her books, once published, remained steady sellers; they were often reviewed favourably and were fashionable amongst the elite aristocracy of the early nineteenth century, but despite this success, Austen was not persuaded to 'come out' as the author of the books, and when she died, in 1817, her achievements as a writer were not mentioned at her funeral, though the 'extraordinary endowments' of her mind were.
Austen was not the only female author in the nineteenth century and beyond to hide behind a veil. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, which was first published a year after Austen's death in 1818, had the first few editions of her book published anonymously; Charlotte Bronte wrote under two pen names - Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and Currer Bell, the name which appears on early versions of her most famous novel, Jane Eyre.
It wasn't until much later in the nineteenth century that authors such as Louisa May Alcott were able to print under their own names as men were - Little Women was published in 1868. Though Alcott herself was a passionate advocate of women's suffrage - she was the first woman to register to vote in the state of Massachusetts - there are some schools of thought which say that she was only published because her novels were deemed 'mere' women's books. Her semi-autobiographical stories were seen as fairly trivial, and not radical enough to be threatening to most men, who in the nineteenth century, and beyond had a firm idea of where women 'belonged' - and it was not in the publishing house.
Clearly, this is not something I agree with at all, but I can at least understand where most of these men were coming from. They had been brought up in an incredibly patriarchal society, which firmly believed that women should not be involved in business of any description - some even believed that educating women beyond the basic skills needed to write letters or perhaps speak a little French was too much. They were a product of the society they had been brought up in; it took a World War and the womens' suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to show them how wrong they had been in their ideas, and fortunately for us today, there would be no need for a female author to publish anonymously or under a male pseudonym, because we no longer live in such a sexist society.
Except, a few years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I remember listening to a radio interview with a female author, who was asked why she had used a pseudonym (of sorts) to publish her (very well selling, and well written) books under. The author replied that she had been advised that publishing her stories, which had been written to appeal to neither boys nor girls specifically, under her obviously female name might turn boys off reading the books - young boys wouldn't want to been seen reading a book written by an (eurgh!) GIRL. Her publishing house advised her that she should at least attempt to make her name less obviously feminine, in order to appeal to a male fanbase.
So she did, choosing to publish using her first initials and surname - 'J' and 'K' and 'Rowling'. It's such a remarkably progressive society we live in.
With great difficulty, it appears. Pride and Prejudice was not Austen's first published novel, and had in fact been a work in progress for many years prior to it's publishing, but when it finally went to print in 1813, it did so anonymously and only after Austen's brother, Henry, had persuaded Thomas Egerton to publish the novel. Her books, once published, remained steady sellers; they were often reviewed favourably and were fashionable amongst the elite aristocracy of the early nineteenth century, but despite this success, Austen was not persuaded to 'come out' as the author of the books, and when she died, in 1817, her achievements as a writer were not mentioned at her funeral, though the 'extraordinary endowments' of her mind were.
Austen was not the only female author in the nineteenth century and beyond to hide behind a veil. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, which was first published a year after Austen's death in 1818, had the first few editions of her book published anonymously; Charlotte Bronte wrote under two pen names - Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and Currer Bell, the name which appears on early versions of her most famous novel, Jane Eyre.
It wasn't until much later in the nineteenth century that authors such as Louisa May Alcott were able to print under their own names as men were - Little Women was published in 1868. Though Alcott herself was a passionate advocate of women's suffrage - she was the first woman to register to vote in the state of Massachusetts - there are some schools of thought which say that she was only published because her novels were deemed 'mere' women's books. Her semi-autobiographical stories were seen as fairly trivial, and not radical enough to be threatening to most men, who in the nineteenth century, and beyond had a firm idea of where women 'belonged' - and it was not in the publishing house.
Clearly, this is not something I agree with at all, but I can at least understand where most of these men were coming from. They had been brought up in an incredibly patriarchal society, which firmly believed that women should not be involved in business of any description - some even believed that educating women beyond the basic skills needed to write letters or perhaps speak a little French was too much. They were a product of the society they had been brought up in; it took a World War and the womens' suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to show them how wrong they had been in their ideas, and fortunately for us today, there would be no need for a female author to publish anonymously or under a male pseudonym, because we no longer live in such a sexist society.
Except, a few years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I remember listening to a radio interview with a female author, who was asked why she had used a pseudonym (of sorts) to publish her (very well selling, and well written) books under. The author replied that she had been advised that publishing her stories, which had been written to appeal to neither boys nor girls specifically, under her obviously female name might turn boys off reading the books - young boys wouldn't want to been seen reading a book written by an (eurgh!) GIRL. Her publishing house advised her that she should at least attempt to make her name less obviously feminine, in order to appeal to a male fanbase.
So she did, choosing to publish using her first initials and surname - 'J' and 'K' and 'Rowling'. It's such a remarkably progressive society we live in.
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