Jane Austen and Leisure

David Selwyn

Jul. 1998 · Bloomsbury Publishing

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Jane Austen's novels portray a leisured society of gentlemen and ladies who do not need to work. Even the minority of clergymen, soldiers and sailors - men with professions - are almost never seen working. Jane Austen herself, despite responsibility for some domestic tasks, wrote as a woman of leisure. Yet leisure, the distinguishing mark of a gentleman, was not meant to be an excuse for idleness. The proper use of leisure to fulfil duties, to read and to think, and above all to pursue social relations in a world where family and marriage for the propertied was of central importance, was a vital test of character.

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David Selwyn is the author of Jane Austen and Leisure and the editor of Jane Austen Collected Poems and verse of the Austen Family, The Complete Poems of James Austen, Fugitive Pieces: The poems of James Edward Austen-Leigh and, with Maggie Lane, Jane Austen: A Celebration. He is Chairman of the Jane Austen Society. As well as editing the journal of the Jane Austen Society, he has contributed to the new Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen for CUP, and also to the forthcoming second edition of the Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen.