ABSTRACT
Jane Austen wrote her novels in a cultural context of tension between two quite different ways of thinking about language. This chapter argues that that elements of Austen's writing were rooted in eighteenth-century principles of formality, but also that most of these principles were to do with more 'serious' writing than fiction, and women's fiction especially. Austen's situation, as a woman novelist at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was a historically complex one, and her relationship with eighteenth-century thinking was a complex one as a result. One indication of Blair's popularity and salience as a prescriptivist and a writer of model sermons is that he is mentioned three times in Jane Austen's work, by Mrs Percival in Catharine, by Eleanor Tilney in Northanger Abbey and by Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park. The chapter discusses specific aspects of Jane Austen's style and shows some remarks about issues which Hugh Blair's prescriptivism raises.
