DEVONEY LOOSER is the author of British Women Writers and the Writing of History (2000) and the editor of Generations: Academic Feminists in Dialogue (1997). She is assistant professor at Louisiana State University and is a member of the board of directors of the Jane Austen Society of North America.

'Including essays by some of the most stimulating specialists in the novel and the 'new' literary period, 1770-1830, this provocative, sometimes daring, collection will quickly become required reading for all engaged with applications of feminist theories, with women in the literary marketplace, and, of course, with Jane Austen.' Paula Backscheider

• Introduction; D.Looser - Jane Austen, Romantic Feminism, and Civil Society; G.Kelly - The Marriage Plot in Austen: Questions of Persistence; L.Mooneyham - Privacy, Privilege, and Poaching in Mansfield Park; E.Gardiner - Pride and Prejudice, Feminist Theory, and the Recapitulation of Unequal Gender Relations; B.Hain, B.Craven, G.Brunner & C.Andre - Jane Austen and the Burden of the (Male) Past: The Case Reexamined; J.Harris - Austen's Handling of Endogamous Unions; G.A.Hudson - 'The Different Sorts of Friendship': Desire in Mansfield Park; M.G.Anderson - Austen, Gender, and Genre; C.Siskin