What Matters in Jane Austen? Audiobook By John Mullan cover art

What Matters in Jane Austen?

Twenty Essential Questions Answered

Preview

Audible Standard 30-day free trial

Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection of titles.
Yours as long as you’re a member.
Get unlimited access to bingeable podcasts.
Standard auto renews for $8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

What Matters in Jane Austen?

By: John Mullan
Narrated by: Charles Armstrong
Try Standard free

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.52

Buy for $20.52

Bloomsbury presents the 250TH BIRTHDAY EDITION of What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Mullan, read by Charles Armstrong

‘Almost as good as finding an unpublished novel’ The Lady
'Any new book on Austen raises the urgent question, Would I get more pleasure from reading this than from re-reading my favourite Austen novel? You'll know after a few pages here that you've made the right choice' Sunday Times

Is there any sex in Jane Austen?
Why do her plots rely on blunders?
Which important characters never actually speak?

Jane Austen’s novels have been a staple of the British canon since the nineteenth century. Yet critics of the time did not appreciate the true complexity of her work. Neither Austen’s literary innovations nor the cunning intracacy of her novels were understood – much less the fascinating patterns and puzzles thrown up by some of the most famous works of English literature. Nothing, John Mullan argues, is accidental or coincidental in Austen. As she herself said, she wrote for readers who have ‘a great deal of ingenuity themselves’.

What Matters in Jane Austen? gets to the heart of what it is that makes Austen’s work so singular. In twenty chapters, answering questions her novels have posed for over two centuries, Mullan uncovers the hidden truth of an extraordinary fictional world and reveals the true brilliance – and underappreciated complexity – of Austen’s oeuvre.©2025 John Mullan (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Art & Literature Authors Biographies & Memoirs Europe European Great Britain Literary History & Criticism World Literature Thought-Provoking
No reviews yet