Jane West and Jane Austen: Emma SMackdown?

Think Jane Austen was in her "dark ages" in the 1820s, in the first decade after she died? It wasn't quite that stark. I've just published a piece in Essays in Romanticism describing how one novelist, Jane West, reimagined Austen's Emma in her novel Ringrove (1827). Did West admire Emma or did she disapprove? Some of the changes West made to Austen's plot suggest she wanted to write a different story about gender, class, and privilege, especially when it came to farmer-suitors. Is West's Emma Herbert a fictional response to Austen's Emma Woodhouse? I think so. Let me know what you think!

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