Editing Jane Austen (section)

===Modern===
[[File:Jane Austen, from A Memoir of Jane Austen (1870).jpg|thumb|right|Depiction of Austen from ''[[A Memoir of Jane Austen]]'' (1871) written by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, and based on the sketch by Cassandra. All subsequent portraits of Austen are generally based on this, including on the reverse of the [[Bank of England £10 note]] introduced in September 2017.]]

Austen's works have attracted legions of scholars. The first dissertation on Austen was published in 1883, by George Pellew, a student at Harvard University.<ref>Devoney Looser, The Making of Jane Austen (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 185–196.</ref> Another early academic analysis came from a 1911 essay by the Oxford Shakespearean scholar [[A. C. Bradley]],<ref>Trott (2005), 92.</ref> who grouped Austen's novels into "early" and "late" works, a distinction still used by scholars today.<ref>Southam (1987), 79.</ref> The first academic book devoted to Austen in France was ''Jane Austen'' by Paul and Kate Rague (1914), who set out to explain why French critics and readers should take Austen seriously.<ref name="auto1"/> The same year, Léonie Villard published ''Jane Austen, Sa Vie et Ses Oeuvres'', originally her PhD thesis, the first serious academic study of Austen in France.<ref name="auto1"/> In 1923, R.W. Chapman published the first scholarly edition of Austen's collected works, which was also the first scholarly edition of any English novelist. The Chapman text has remained the basis for all subsequent published editions of Austen's works.<ref>Southam (1987), 99–100; see also Watt (1963), 10–11; Gilson (2005), 149–50; Johnson (2014), 239.</ref>

With the publication in 1939 of Mary Lascelles' ''Jane Austen and Her Art'', the academic study of Austen took hold.<ref>Southam (1987), 107–109, 124.</ref> Lascelles analysed the books Austen read and their influence on her work, and closely examined Austen's style and "narrative art". Concern arose that academics were obscuring the appreciation of Austen with increasingly esoteric theories, a debate that has continued since.<ref>Southam (1986), 108; Watt (1963), 10–11; Stovel (2014), 248; Southam (1987), 127</ref>

The period since the Second World War has seen a diversity of critical approaches to Austen, including [[feminist theory]], and perhaps most controversially, [[postcolonialism|postcolonial theory]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Said, Edward W.|title=Culture and imperialism |publisher=Vintage Books |year=1994|isbn=0-679-75054-1|edition=1st Vintage books|location=New York|oclc=29600508}}</ref> The divide has widened between the popular appreciation of Austen, particularly by modern [[Janeite]]s, and academic judgements.<ref>Rajan (2005), 101–110</ref> In 1994 the literary critic [[Harold Bloom]] placed Austen among the [[The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages|greatest Western writers of all time]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Bloom |first=Harold |author-link=Harold Bloom |year=1994 |title=The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages |page=[https://archive.org/details/westerncanonbook00bloorich/page/2 2] |location=New York |publisher=Harcourt Brace |isbn=0-15-195747-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/westerncanonbook00bloorich/page/226}}</ref>

In the People's Republic of China after 1949, writings of Austen were regarded as too frivolous,<ref>Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British Fiction in New China: A Brief Report" pp. 207–213 from ''Nineteenth-Century Fiction'', Volume 37, No. 2. September 1982 p. 210.</ref> and thus during the Chinese [[Cultural Revolution]] of 1966–76, Austen was banned as a "British bourgeois imperialist".<ref>Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British Fiction in New China: A Brief Report" pp. 207–213 from ''Nineteenth-Century Fiction'', Volume 37, No. 2. September 1982 p. 212.</ref> In the late 1970s, when Austen's works were re-published in China, her popularity with readers confounded the authorities who had trouble understanding that people generally read books for enjoyment, not political edification.<ref>Zhu Hong "Nineteenth-Century British Fiction in New China: A Brief Report" pp. 207–213 from ''Nineteenth-Century Fiction'', Volume 37, No. 2. September 1982 p. 213.</ref>

The conservative American professor Gene Koppel claimed that Austen and her family were "Tories of the deepest dye", i.e. Conservatives in opposition to the liberal Whigs. Although several feminist authors such as Claudia Johnson and Mollie Sandock claimed Austen for their own cause, Koppel argued that different people react to a work of literature in different subjective ways, as explained by the philosopher [[Hans-Georg Gadamer]]. Thus competing interpretations of Austen's work can be equally valid, provided they are grounded in textual and historical analysis: it is equally possible to see Austen as a feminist critiquing [[Regency era|Regency-era]] society and as a conservative upholding its values.<ref name="Koppel">{{cite web|last=Koppel|first=Gene|date=2 November 1989|title=Pride and Prejudice: Conservative or Liberal Novel—Or Both? (A Gadamerian Approach)|url=http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number11/koppel.htm|access-date=25 October 2016}}</ref>