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Talk:Reception history of Jane Austen/GA1

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GA Review

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This looks like a thorough, well written, and well researched treatment of the reception history of Jane Austen's works. It is well organized and well written, and seems free of any major problems. The areas that might be improved are:

General comments

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  • The article could do with a brief (Main article perhaps) overview section of Austen and her works for context before diving into the reception history.
  • However feels a little to frequent in the article, and downright overused in the denser sections. Sometimes a but is good enough. :-)
  • Note that a high frequency of However may be an indication of overuse of contrasting sentences that replacing the word will not alone address. I didn't notice that as a problem in this article, but it might be worth keeping in mind. --Xover (talk) 11:28, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The use of ellipses are… confusing, at times. Liberally inserting spaces around them would alleviate the ambiguity. For example, anywhere an elision is marked with an ellipsis without a preceding space, there is the risk that it will read as if the sentence just trails off. Where ellipsis are used without a trailing space, it reads as if the following sentence is resumed somewhere in the middle. The current useage is within the bounds of what WP:MOS allows, I think, but it would be good to fix this none the less.

Lede

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  • Second sentence is a bit much. Split with a period rather then semicolon?
  • During her lifetime, Austen's novels brought her little personal fame, because she chose to publish anonymously and her works received only a few positive reviews, although they were popular with people of fashion. That's a bit of a mouthfull. Split? And people of fashion just rubs me all the wrong ways. “fashionable people” perhaps? “…who considered themselves fashionable”? I'm going to go ahead and assume this doesn't refer to people in the fashion industry or who were themselves in vogue. :-)
  • …her novels were admired by a literary elite… Which literary elite?
  • The use of a suggests this is one elite out of many, which begs for a description or definition of this specific one. If the defining property of this elite is that they consider an appreciation of her works as a mark of cultivation then the sentence works as it stands. If we're not talking about one out of a plurality of elites then the noun marker should be the, and then literary elite would be definition enough in itself. --Xover (talk) 11:42, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • …who viewed their appreciation of her works as a mark of cultivation. Only their own appreciation, or appreciation in general?
  • The publication of her nephew's Memoir of Jane Austen (1870)… “in 1870” would avoid the parenthetical.
  • By the turn of the twentieth century, Ninteenth perhaps?
  • …some to worship her and some to defend her from the masses. Why does she need defending from the masses?
  • I don't think this sentence accurately reflects what is actually covered in the Janeites section. The latter describes the contrast between the academic/elitist Janeites and the popular Janeites, but it doesn't specifically mention any society or “cult” whose purpose it was to defend her from the adoring masses. The bit after the colon in the lede might better say that one broad category favoured an intellectual and academic appreciation, and the other a more populist and general one. That there is a conflict between the two points of view is a given, but I don't think it's accurate (based on what's currently in the article) to say that one group had as a defining purpose to “defend” her from the other. At the very least I think the word “defend” needs to be in scare quotes. --Xover (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this does reflect the section, particularly the James quotes. The literary elite appreciated Austen in a different way than the masses, was proud of it, and saw themselves as a bulwark against "the vulgar masses" and their love of Austen. One of their defining purposes was to protect Austen from fandom. :) Awadewit (talk) 13:12, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Early in the twentieth century, scholars produced a carefully edited collection of her works—the first for any British novelist. Needs cite.
  • By the 1940s, Austen was firmly ensconced in academia as a "great English novelist". Needs cite.
  • With the advent of university English departments… When?
  • Fans, often disparaged by academics… Fans seems colloquial. And why were they disparaged by academics?
  • …have founded… Awkward transition to past tense. Drop the “have” perhaps?
  • …starting with the 1940 Pride and Prejudice and evolving to include such productions as the 2004 Bollywood Bride and Prejudice. Insert an “adaptation” or something between the Bollywood and Bride to make the linked terms easier to distinguish?

1812–1821: Individual reactions and contemporary reviews

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  • Austen's novels quickly became fashionable among opinion-makers. Lady Bessborough wrote… Who is Lady Bessborough?
  • …her friends were "full of it [Sense and Sensibility] at Althorp"… It's preferable to avoid wikilinks inside quotations. Could the subject be introduced (and linked) outside the quote?
  • Would it perhaps be clearer to use a larger portion of the quote? Something like: Lady Bessborough wrote of Sense and Sensibility that her friends were "It is a clever novel. They were full of it at Althorpe, and tho' it ends stupidly, I was much amused by it." --Xover (talk) 12:26, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Austen's novels quickly became fashionable among opinion-makers. Lady Bessborough wrote that her friends were "full of it [Sense and Sensibility] at Althorp" and Princess Charlotte Augusta, daughter of the Prince Regent and then fifteen, compared herself to one of its heroines, Marianne: "I think Marianne & me are very like in disposition, that certainly I am not so good, the same imprudence, &tc". Marathon sentence. Split and possibly trim a bit?
  • …published together in December 1817 after Austen's death… Is it her death or the date that is the important point? “…after Austen's death in December 1817…” perhaps?
  • In the Quarterly Review in 1821, Richard Whately published the most serious and enthusiastic early posthumous review of Austen's work. Needs cite (“most”).

19th-century European translations

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  • The first translation of Austen’s works appeared in 1813 with the French Pride and Prejudice… Was that the French title?
  • The current sentence parses a bit awkwardly. The structure suggests the title in French is literally "Pride and Prejudice" which induces a bit of a mental double-take. Perhaps it could be The first translation of Austen’s works appeared in 1813 with the French Pride and Prejudice in French… or possibly The first translation of Austen’s works appeared in 1813 with the French Orgueil et préjugés…? --Xover (talk) 12:50, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm really sorry to be stubborn about this one, but the grammar works out and I just can't see the problem here. Your first version sounds awkward and I'm not sure of the title of the French version - it is not given in my source. Do you have a source for that? Awadewit (talk) 13:20, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, sorry, Cossy and Saglia doesn't give it so I had to google for it. The above was picked from Amazon.fr's title of the DVD, and a cursory scan of Google's Scholar and Books suggests it's correct. Do you want to leave it as it stands or keep trying for some alternate way to convey the information? --Xover (talk) 13:37, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would prefer to have a solid source for the actual nineteenth-century publication if we were to use the French title. I don't have time to track that down right now, however. Perhaps my co-editor can work on that. I'll let him know. Awadewit (talk) 13:45, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • However, the first Russian translation did not appear until 1967. Awkward transition. What happened in between the previous sentence and this one?
  • I think however was actually right here; it's contrasting the late Russian translation with the prompt translations to other languages. But the paragraph begins by talking about how rapidly the first few translations appeared, and then there is an abrupt gap of ~150 years with no explanation. Did no translations appear in the interim? Was Russian the last (major) language it was translated to? --Xover (talk) 13:00, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • There is no gap. The entire section is only about 19th-century European translations. We just thought it important to mention that there was no Russian translation until the 20th century because Russia can be considered part of Europe. Awadewit (talk) 13:20, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Family biographies

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  • This was followed by a proliferation of fancy illustrated editions… “fancy” feels colloquial here. “Elaborate” perhaps?

1930–the present: Modern scholarship

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  • Section title has an expiration date. Just plain “Modern scholarship” perhaps? (the first para pegs it at 1930 and onwards, so there's no confusion).
  • The second was Oxford Shakespearean scholar… Why is “Oxford” called out here?
  • Hmm. I suspect this is either a) an attempt to establish notability (in the sources), since all the books and articles he's known for were apparently first written as lectures specifically in his function as Professor of Poetry at Oxford; or b) a simple honorific (i.e. serves the same function as calling him Professor, but emphasising that it's not just any professor, but an Oxford professor). Given it conveys no critical information (his relevance here is as a Shakespeare scholar), and MOS recommends avoiding honorifics, I would suggest dropping it. It could be misconstrued as indicating Bradley to be a follower of the Oxfordian theory (and that this distinction is somehow relevant to Austen). --Xover (talk) 13:11, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 1920s saw a boom in Austen scholarship. Now we're moving back in time.
  • The first sentence describes where we are going and then the first paragraph is a "pave the way" description about the 1910s and the second paragraph is about the 1920s and 1930s. Awadewit (talk) 03:10, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would suggest looking at ways to smooth this. By giving the periods down to the decade rather then century, you create an expectation that the text will stay within those bounds (i.e. overshoot the given boundaries by no more than years). In this specific instance, the text dealing with 1900–1920 might be moved to the preceeding section (and the section headings changed accordingly); or the two first sentences of the second paragraph might be moved to the end of the first paragraph. Since the second paragraph gives the decade early and prominently as The 1920s, but the paragraph in the main deals with the 1930s, the reader is left confused as to where we are in the timeline and needs to make an extra effort to orient themselves. It's not a big issue, but fixing it would reduce the cognitive impedance. --Xover (talk) 11:28, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The citation needed tag here should really be addressed.

Adaptations

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  • The Bollywood-inspired film Bride and Prejudice premiered in 2004. Yet another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was released the following year, in 2005. Redundant. Drop either the following year or in 2005.

Holding this article is mostly just a formality. Apart from a few minor things, this is essentially already a Good Article. Excellent work; kudos to all involved! --Xover (talk) 23:24, 1 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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