​     A naïve young lady travels to Bath with an older female companion and ventures into society. She meets a charming and witty young man. But will her dreams of romance be destroyed when it is discovered that she is not from a wealthy and distinguished family?
     This is not Northanger Abbey, this is The Aunt and the Niece. The Aunt and the Niece was anonymously published in 1804, and was subsequently attributed to the author of Eversfield Abbey (1806), The Woman of Colour (1809), and other novels. If the attribution chain is correct, this authoress moved from Minerva Press (considered to be a low-brow publishing house) to the respectable John Crosby and then to Black, Perry, and Kingsbury, publishers who did not specialize in fiction. Then she went back to Minerva for two more novels. The authoress could be Mrs. Bayfield, but Mrs. E.M. Foster is also tangled up in this chain of attributions--or it might even be a third person whose name has been lost.
    The Aunt and the Niece is a brisk-moving two-volume novel with a satisfying amount of drama. Typically of novels of this period, it relies upon untimely death and misunderstanding for its plot, and coincidence for its resolution. The villains are satisfyingly despicable. In fact, the authoress throws some shade at her readers when she suggests that they won't be as interested in the virtuous characters...

       So where are you in your journey from Austen fan to Austen superfan? Have you worked out the Austen family tree? Do you smile politely when someone quotes Austen's "little bit of ivory" at you, because you've already heard or read it a hundred times? Have you read any or all of the novels mentioned in Northanger Abbey? Did you know that "Lover's Vows," the play performed by the young people in Mansfield Park, was a real play?
      In my opinion, Jane Austen's Bookshelf by Rebecca Romney is geared toward people who are not far along in their Austen journey, but are ready and eager to learn more. On the other hand, well-informed Janeites might find that it covers familiar territory, while others might be bemused by the proposition that Maria Edgeworth and Frances Burney are forgotten writers whose connection to Austen was waiting to be rediscovered.
    I don't mean that as a criticism of a well-written and deeply researched book, which this is. For someone wanting to learn more about Austen and her literary world, Jane Austen's Bookshelf is packed with revelations for the reader (I'll get back to that later) and a valuable guidebook to the literature of her time.   

   In the previous three posts, I gave a synopsis of the satirical novel Rosella, or, Modern Occurrences, by Mary Charlton. This novel is not so well-known as other novels of the same type, such as The Female Quixote or The Heroine.
   If you're familiar with the modern academy, you won't be surprised to know that scholars are mostly interested in the question of whether Rosella's author Mary Charlton has feminist leanings or not. Natalie Neill devotes much of her introductory essay on Rosella to examining the apparently conflicting messages: “Although Rosella can be read as a conservative satire, there are tensions in the text that complicate such a reading…. Further complicating our understanding of Rosella is the way that it opens itself to feminist counter readings…”
   I think Charlton, like other authors of the period, mocks and criticizes human foibles on both sides of any question. As did Austen. Consider that Austen satirizes the vain Sir Walter Elliott but also skewers his toad-eating attorney Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Shepherd’s ambitious-social-climbing daughter, Mrs. Clay. So, which side is she on--is she with Jacobins who want to overthrow the aristocracy or is she an Anti-Jacobin who believes people should stay in the social class they were born into? I think she’s laughing at both sides. Likewise, Lydia Bennet is ignorant and has no education, Mary Bennet is a pedant and uses her education to be tiresome, while Elizabeth is the happy medium between the two.

​   In my previous post, I introduced a discussion of the forgotten novel Rosella, or, Modern Occurrences (1799) by Mary Charlton. This novel is a good candidate for books to read when you've read everything Austen wrote and want more. In the last post I went over the prologue of the book which sets up the premise for the story: this is about two good friends, Sophia and Selina, who are deluded novel-readers. Sophia is a widow, Selina is married to a grouchy old attorney, so they live their lives vicariously through Sophia's unacknowledged daughter, Rosella Montresor.
   Sophia Beauclerc, having buried both of her parents, is a wealthy heiress. For the sake of her Gothic romance fantasies, she is fortunate that her estate outside of London is next door to the stately home of an unmarried nobleman! Rosella doesn’t realize that when Sophia sends her to walk or ride in the neighbourhood, or play her harp and sing in the hermitage rather than in the parlor, it is all with the intention of catching Lord Morteyne’s eye and ear. What happens instead is that a gang of “men of fashion” burst drunkenly on to the property in quest of the beautiful songstress. In the process of frightening Rosella with their loud admiration, her harp is badly damaged.
   The harp disappears, and before long, a beautiful new harp is mysteriously delivered, rather like the pianoforte that shows up in Highbury in Emma. Rosella assumes it’s a generous gift from her dear friend Miss Beauclerc. The reader, or at least this reader, assumed that Lord Morteyne was honourably taking responsibility for the boorish behavior of his guests. Sophia and her friend Selina believe that it’s proof that his Lordship is smitten with Rosella.