Reading Jane Austen After Reading Charlotte Smith

This book explores what it means to read the six major works of Jane Austen, in

light of the ten major works of fiction by Charlotte Smith. It proposes that Smith

had a deep and lasting impact on Austen, but this is not an influence study. Instead,

it argues for the possibility that two authors who never met could between them

write something into being, both responding to and creating a novelistic zeitgeist.

This, the book argues, can be called co-writing. This book will appeal to students

and scholars of the novel, of women’s writing, and of Smith and Austen specifically.

“This book presents a major re-evaluation of Charlotte Smith’s impact on Jane Austen that not only demonstrates how important Smith was to Austen’s development as a novelist, but also establishes the significance of Smith’s contributions to the development of the novel as an innovative genre at the end of the eighteenth century. Labbe’s cogent, provocative, and challenging discussion of the sixteen novels these paired writers published offers an exciting, new way of thinking about authorial interactions that pushes beyond the unidirectionality of influence theory to advocate for an interactive intertextuality that positions Smith and Austen in a complementary relationship which Labbe playfully describes as “co-writing.” Meticulous and marvelous in locating so many instances in which Austen and Smith speak to one another, Labbe persuasively argues that critical recognition of the value of Austen’s writing needs, in turn, to appreciate the forethinking present in Smith’s work.” (Dr. Harriet Kramer Linkin, Emerita Distinguished Professor, Department of English, New Mexico State University) 

“This book offers a lively challenge to ideas of influence. It provokes and persuades. It is written in a refreshing and innovative style, which never fails to interest the reader. The works of both Charlotte Smith and Jane Austen are enriched by this study, which upends what we think we know to reveal so much more than we realised.” (Professor Sharon Ruston, Department of English and Creative Writing, Lancaster University)

“This book is thought-provoking, insightful and accessible, offering a new approach to reading women’s fiction of the Romantic period and, indeed, women’s writing more generally. Instead of proposing a simple model of 'influence' (which puts women writers in competition and perpetuates the canon as it stands), Labbe makes a compelling case for ‘co-writing’, for dialogue and exchange that works particularly well with the Romantic period novel. This book not only sheds fresh light on Charlotte Smith and Jane Austen; it provides an innovative account of how women writers can productively be read as engaging in conversation rather than competition.” (Professor Fiona Price, University of Chichester, Bishop Otter campus)

Professor Jacqueline M. Labbe is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at De

Montfort University, UK. She has also worked at the University of Sheffield and

the University of Warwick, UK. She has published extensively on the poetry and

fiction of the Romantic period, including the first full-length study of Smith and

Wordsworth.