ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book argues that Jane Austen's style was rooted in two opposing principles, of reading aloud and of eighteenth-century prescriptivism, and that both of these were aspects of eighteenth-century culture. It describes the nineteenth-century reconstruction of Austen as an author who could be separated from her eighteenth-century roots. The book locates the critical recuperation of Austen especially in three cultural processes which were at work in the nineteenth century. It looks briefly a substantial piece of criticism, written by a critic who was in some respects quintessentially Victorian. The Memoir offered a highly selective account of Austen, portraying her writing as an extension of her blameless and eventless life. For modern readers, Jane Austen is far more worth spending time on than any other writer of her period.
