Introduction

Scholarly collections of essays take many forms. Whether pitched as ‘miscellanies’ or as volumes designed to situate their subject ‘in context’, they share an aspiration to be wide-ranging, even while staying within the bounds prescribed by the volume’s announced focus. The continuing interest in ‘companions’ to Austen, like the proliferation of scholarly monographs and articles on the writer, testify to the long-standing assumptions about her centrality to the canon of British literature as well as to perceptions of her continuing ‘relevance’. In planning for The Routledge Companion, the people issued deliberately broad invitations to potential contributors whose work on Austen the people knew and admired as well as to emerging scholars they were just beginning to ‘meet’ or who had been recommended by colleagues in the field. Indeed, one of the most delightful aspects of working with contributors and reading their essays-in-progress was the discovery of unanticipated connections that emerged across their work.