Jane Austen's Bookshelf: The women writers who shaped a legend

Burney’s comedic set pieces, Radcliffe’s cavernous hallways, Lennox’s bold witticisms, More’s commonalities with Wollstonecraft, Inchbald’s honed elegance, Piozzi’s unrepentant heart, and Edgeworth’s irresistible characters.

Austen paints with a smaller palette than Burney. She is not as moving as Radcliffe. She is less daring than Lennox. She has less conviction than Hannah More. She is less philosophical than Smith. She is not as witty as Inchbald. She doesn’t have as much heart as Piozzi. She lacks the depth of wisdom of Edgeworth. But does that change my love for Austen? Of course not.

Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983), an ironic “guide” to the mechanics of ignoring, discrediting, and erasing the contributions of women to our literary heritage.

But Emma is by no means a simple imitation of Belinda. Instead, it is as if Austen is in dialogue with Edgeworth. Where Edgeworth gives us Lady Delacour admitting she didn’t always lead Belinda well, Austen gives us Emma realizing that she led Harriet astray. It’s the same theme, but inverted in perspective.

We may tire of the heavy-handed moral in novels like Inchbald’s, but we have our own version of it in concepts like “likability.”

Wordsworth set the terms for Radcliffe’s demise by turning her into a representative of a “lower” genre, rather than the best of a popular genre.

Many canonical writers were terrible fathers—Charles Dickens, William Faulkner—yet that subject rarely dominates critical conversations around them.

The first part of A Simple Story gallops along on the snappy bickering of Milner and Sandford that kept me riveted. But the second part of Inchbald’s novel shifts into a kind of moralizing that’s simply not to my taste as a modern reader.

Elizabeth Inchbald is, simply, great. Radcliffe’s transcendent gothic excesses may not be to your taste, and Smith’s brilliant novels may be too long for you—but, if you like Austen’s novels, you’ll find much to appreciate in Inchbald’s.