Introduction

Summary

This introduction traces the critical reception of Jane Austen’s fiction in terms of the economy of her writing, especially as promoted by George Henry Lewes in the nineteenth century. The chapter examines how Austen often commented on her selection of material, and the interest it might generate, when she wrote her private letters and it points to the relevance of this self-consciousness for her fiction. The chapter goes on to examine young Jane Austen’s fascination with constricted writing spaces as she composed her juvenilia and her similar interest in physically constricted domestic spaces, an interest that continued into her published novels. The chapter argues that the radically contracted spaces of the juvenilia are foundational for Austen’s later writing.