Why do some people consider Jane Austen as a Victorian writer?

Because they are misinformed? Seriously, lots of people, especially Americans, are not very well versed in British history. read more

Jane Austen: 1775–1817. Victorian Period: 1837 - 1901. Perhaps the earlier film adaptations of some of her work like Pride and Prejudice 1940 which had settings and costumes from the early Victorian period also confused them. Perhaps they’ve never heard of the Regency Period : 1811–1820 when Jane Austen was actually writing and her novels are set. read more

My real field of expertise is the Victorian novel, and Jane Austen is not, as I routinely remind my students, a Victorian novelist. She died twenty years before Victoria ascended the British throne, and as a novelist she shares more in common with late eighteenth-century writers like Ann Radcliffe and Fanny Burney than she does with her Victorian successors. read more

But the irony of our obsession with Jane Austen the woman is that during her lifetime, her works were all published anonymously. Her first novel to be published, Sense and Sensibility, was simply 'By a Lady'. read more