ABSTRACT
Imagination and memory feature widely and crucially in the novels of Jane Austen, and critics and scholars of her works have been taking notice. Studies of imagination in Austen’s fiction initially tended to set her apart from her Romantic contemporaries, locating a (Samuel) Johnsonian distrust of imagination and its “dangers” in various works, only to later develop a more complex picture, with Austen sharing something of the enthusiasm of a Coleridge or Shelley for the creative or ethical imagination while remaining wary of imaginative excess. 1 Studies of memory in Austen range from Nicholas Dames’ groundbreaking work on the role (and historical context) of nostalgia in Austen’s novels to a thematics of memory that, in yet another way, links her to such Romantic contemporaries as Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron. 2 What critics have failed to note as of yet concerns the intimate linkage found throughout Austen’s fictional works between imagination and memory, interrelated mental faculties that can function—or malfunction—together for good or ill.
