I second George Eliot.
I'd also recommend E.M. Forster, Howards End. It's great!
I second George Eliot.
I'd also recommend E.M. Forster, Howards End. It's great!
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
Helen Keller
There have been some good recommendations here, like Brontës, Alcott and Gaskell. I would like to add L. M. Montgomery to the list. She has written some great characters, which remind me of Austen's satirical style. Even though most her books are considered children's literature, I still love to read them again and again. Blue Castle is one of my all-time favourite novels. Apart from her novels, Montgomery wrote lots of great short stories, too.
Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing. Her hair was golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes.
Gaston Leroux - The Phantom of the Opera
Little Women is charming.
George Eliot's style is more like Dickens than Austen. As a fellow esteemed female writer of that period, it's worth giving her a shot anyway, though it's not as light as Austen.
Vanity Fair is a good choice. It's a satire but a very light one and features one of the best female protagonists in literature: the feisty Becky Sharp.
The Brontes are not a bad choice. By Brontes, I really mean Charlotte as Emily's style isn't very similar to Austen's.
The twentieth century writer often compared to Jane Austen is Barbara Pym. The same female viewpoint, educated but socially insecure, with a very limited social scene, but people's characters and self-deceptions acutely revealed through dialogue and domestic details. Excellent Women is often said to be a good starting place, but I love A Glass of Blessings for an account of a respectable, straight laced lady in the 1950s who finds gays perfectly acceptable. Indeed more fun than her boring husband. And a later novel, The Sweet Dove Died, is an account of a possessive older woman, comes near to tragedy (as well as being very funny.)
It is absolutely no coincidence neither Miss Austen nor Miss Pym ever married. I'm sure most men found Jane far too intelligent. Barbara was fascinated by men, but they were always inadequate. The gay ones were more amusing.
A contemporary of Jane Austen not mentioned so far is Susan Ferrier: I read The Inheritance last year. She's a bit melodramatic compared to Jane, but then most people are.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
I enjoyed Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James. A detective story set in Mr Darcy and Elizabeth's vicinity. Wickham features heavily.
And what about Cranford by Mrs Gaskell? Barbara Pym's work is enjoyable in a quiet and understated way.
Is started by reading Austen as well, so I know how hard it is to find something similar. In my opinion she's the best in what she does. The Bronte sisters have been mentioned several times now, so I will only quickly name them again. They're not that similar but I enjoyed reading their works. After that I moved away from those writers a bit and went on to read To Kill A Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. Especially the latter is a must-read!
I recently read Vanity Fair and found it very enjoyable, it is a very large book which makes it especially satisfying to finish it. And of course the novel itself gives a very nice view on that society. A sort of satirical view, but that makes the novel also a lot of fun to read.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past - The Great Gatsby
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice - Polonius (Hamlet)
Edith Wharton is another suggestion, particularly "The House of Mirth", although it doesn't have the typical Jane Austen happy ending.
To an English reader that sounds very odd. Jane died in 1817. Mary Ann Evans ("George Eliot") was born in 1819. They weren't even contemporaries. Although they are both C19 writers, in old fashioned English terms, Jane is a Georgian, George Eliot is a Victorian and a whole generation or two later.
If you are interested in the classic English novel, then George Eliot is a central figure - although she seems to have slipped from fashion again. She was regarded as fuddy duddy in the early C20, until restored by Frank Levis as a central figure in his Great Tradition.
I used to think she was wonderful, and I think I wept at at least one point in reading all her novels. Indeed I was in almost continual tears of exaltation when I re-read Silas Marner some fifteen years ago, when I was in a vulnerable phase. Recently I've come to think she's a bit worthy: she makes excuses for everyone.
But you should judge for yourself.
(Her style is different both from Jane's balanced classical periods, and Dickens' wonderful romantic excess. A bit clunky to my mind.)
Last edited by Jackson Richardson; 10-02-2012 at 04:27 AM.
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
OK, this would be an outrageous suggestion to most academics, but if you like the Regency period charm romance side of Jane Austen, then look no further than Georgette Heyer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgette_Heyer
Heyer worked hard on getting the period details right, and writes very well: her plots are well worked out. Subtlety of characterization and dialogue, no. Pulp women's magazine fiction, as it were, but if you want a page turner, she does it very well
Previously JonathanB
The more I read, the more I shall covet to read. Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy Partion3, Section 1, Member 1, Subsection 1
Thank you for the suggestions. I have been trying to collect a few pdfs of Georgette Heyer. Moreover I had already read The Grand Sophy a few years ago. And I liked it bigtime. So I would like you to suggest what to read next, in her list.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
I've just read A Little Folly by Jude Morgan - it read like a pastiche of Georgette Heyer but as the book progressed, I recognised several Jane Austen characters and situations.
I can't remember where I read it but some critic remarked that Jane Austen 'had only one legal offspring and his name was Henry James' which sounds astounding until you consider the style and substance of something like Portrait of a Lady. And in the same light, I feel James' 'legal offspring' to be Edith Wharton who has already been mentioned.
I suggest the Bronte sisters and then George Eliot.
Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein
Charlotte Bronte hated Jane Austen's novels. The Brontes and Austen are separated by 40 years, and by a completely different approach to literature. Austen was a humorist and a realist; the Brontes were romantics and fantasists. George Eliot is (perhaps) a little more similar to Austen, but she isn't very funny, either.
IN Austen's six novels, no mad wives appear in attics, nor are there Heathcliffean obsessions, and marital cruelty is limited to hints (did hard-drinking Mr. Price beat his wife?).
For comedies of manners similar to Austen's (there are none equal to Austen's) perhaps you could look at Oscar Wilde's plays, or Forster's novels.