Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen

Many readers will initially be skeptical of Harris's claims about Austen as a "celebrity-watcher" who frequently based characters on famous figures, and many will be put off by the frequency of usages such as may have, could have, if, and perhaps. But Harris's astonishingly rich knowledge of the newspapers, cartoons, and personal correspondence of Austen's time really does permit her to present a new Austen. In Harris's showing, Fanny and Susan Price of Mansfield Park owe much to Fanny Burney and her sister Susan, and that novel's Lieutenant Price channels Susan Burney's coarse, brutal husband, also a marine lieutenant. The Bertram sisters owe something to George III's daughters, and the theatricals owe a great deal to similar scenes in Maria Edgeworth's novels Vivian and especially Patronage. Most all of Austen's less-than-admirable male characters, from Northanger Abbey's John Thorpe and General Tilney onward, convey oblique jabs at the regent himself…. [T]his is a wonderfully rich and convincing presentation of much new material. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *
The book aims to expand our ideas of the nature and bounds of the society Austen knew. The web of acquaintance, coincidence and proximity conjured by Harris is a marvel, and the surprising juxtapositions it produces will certainly inspire fresh thinking about the novels. * Times Literary Supplement *
Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels.... For readers willing to engage with the possible, and to consider links that do not, at first glance, seem probable, Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer.... The tour de force sections of the book are certainly the sections on Sara Baartman (the ‘Hottentot Venus’), the Duke of Clarence, issues of race, abolition, and slavery, and Mansfield Park and Sanditon.... For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture. * The Review of English Studies *
This book is an enjoyable one for anyone who has read Austen’s novels or watched productions of them on television.... Jocelyn Harris is an excellent writer. For an academic study, the usual jargon and allusions to various post-modern theories are happily absent in this book. It is packed with detail and citations. It’s is valuable for Cook enthusiasts because of its chapter on Molesworth Phillips, and the broader considerations surrounding the death of Captain Cook. * Cook's Log *
Satire, Celebrity and Politics is unfailingly fascinating in its dissection of Jane Austen, the satirist, and the text is enhanced by a well-chosen selection of contemporary portraits and gloriously scurrilous cartoons. The “stories behind the stories” always make for an interesting read and Harris has produced a book that will be read with great pleasure by academics and devoted readers alike. * Jane Austen's Regency World *
Jocelyn Harris's book. . . is a pleasant and accessible read. . . . I would emphasise the thorough research into the socio-historical context that has gone into this book, and which makes it of interest to anyone who would like to know more of current events during Austen's lifetime. * Newsletter Of The Jane Austin Society Of North America *
Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read. . . . [the book] testifies to the wit and ingenuity of a novelist who “both plunder[ed] and swerve[d] away from” her contemporaries, thereby both honouring and surpassing them (106). Addressing a variety of topics discussed in Austen studies, Harris reinforces the image of Austen as a well-informed and sharp-minded woman who was seriously engaged with the socio-political issues of the day. Most of all, however, the book gives shape to an Austen who was an avid and grateful consumer of the latest gossip, scandals and satirical prints about those from whom she was never far removed: famous writers, intellectuals and actresses, big naval figures, the royal family. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restricted, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for satire in the process. * The Burney Letter *
Last year’s bicentenary commemoration of the death of Jane Austen has given her readers many reasons for celebration. This book is one of them. . . Jocelyn Harris in this careful, enthusiastic and learned book shows how Jane Austen achieves vision through observation and creates a new and distinctive world from a recognisable world. * Sensibilities *
Although primarily an academic text, Satire, Celebrity and Politics has much of interest here for the lay reader too. The glimpses it offers into regency England and diversions into topics as diverse as the disputed accounts of Cook’s death and the misbehaviour of the Prince Regent are as interesting as the primary analysis. While I am in no position to pass judgement on the intellectual aspects of Harris’s formidable thesis, early reviews suggest it is standing its ground in the fierce world of Austen scholarship. I am off to reread her novels from a fresh perspective. * Otago Daily Times *
Throughout Satire, Celebrity, and Politics, we are thoroughly persuaded of Harris’s main argument that Austen “was a politician, in the former sense of a person keenly interested in practical politics". . . . Harris shows the inherent political nature of Austen’s satire by smartly linking her with the Hogarthian tradition of caricature—a connection usually reserved for other nineteenth-century authors like William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens. * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *