good articles about Jane Austen and her world

[missmeadowsweet]

I just began a college course called bibliography and research. The basic purpose of this course is to prepare the students for further college research and writing. In this course we are required to choose a work of fiction of our choice to analyze and use as our primary research text throughout the course. Being a Jane Austen fan, I chose Pride and Prejudice. I am just now doing some preliminary research for a couple short summaries about Austen, Pride and Prejudice, and the times she lived in. I'm just wondering if anyone knows of any good sources regarding this sort of thing; summaries of the themes she addresses, the issues facing the world she lived in, and how they influenced her, are all questions that I want to look into.

[kiki1982]

Maybe not academic, but I think it's a good starting point: The Republic of Pemberley.

You'll find everything there, from forms of address to details about marriage and such. After that you can further investigate in maybe better academic sources.

[L.M. The Third]

The Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) has scores (if not hundreds) of online articles from their journal "Persuasions", most of which are by academics. It's a little hard to search the site though, so if you give me any specific areas you're interested in, I might be able to direct you to some specific articles.

The volume "A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen" has some good essays on Austen's themes and the philosophies of the day, by such authors as C.S. Lewis, A.S. Byatt, Virginia Woolf, Harold Bloom, etc. (I just reviewed some of the essays at my blog Frigate to Utopia, which you can access by left-clicking on my user-name and then clicking on "View LM's Homepage")