Todd, Janet. The Cambridge Introduction to Jane Austen. Second Edition. Cambridge UP, 2015.
Janet Todd has written an insightful set of interpretive essays on the novels of Jane Austen, but it is a collection best read after one has read the novels. This Cambridge Introduction, then, is not so much a preparation to read the novels but perhaps a preparation to reread them. There is no new biographical research here, so the first chapter that deals with the life and times of the author seems thin. I did not find much new in the discussion of Northanger Abbey, and the last chapter that covers our current Jane Austen Industry seems thrown together. Perhaps it was a needed justification to publish a second edition. It would be interesting to compare the cinematic approaches to Austen’s novels, but there is no mention of Emma Thompson’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility or Joe Wright’s treatment of Pride and Prejudice. Todd is on solider ground in discussing the novels themselves. She points out, for instance, that most of the characters in Sense and Sensibility display both the title qualities in different degrees and that in Pride and Prejudice, the two title terms become harder to distinguish as the novel progresses. In discussing Mansfield Park, Todd explains that Austen was aiming at a different audience than she was in Pride and Prejudice, which may account for its less comic tone. Turning to Emma, I was amused at Todd’s suggestion that Emma’s life as an adult would not have been much changed if she had not married Mr. Knightly, who unlike Darcy, is more cash-poor than his bride. Finally, in Persuasion, Todd finds Austen dramatizing the breakdown of the feudal order of the earlier novels. Wentworth, as a self-made man, is more like Bingley than Darcy but with no need to rent a house in the country. 4 stars. ( )