JulIa PrewItt Brown, Jane Austen's Novels' Social Change and Literary Form, Harvard University Press, 1979.

Brown discusses how Austen uses contrasts between characters, themes, and narrative devices to give structure to her novel.

Marilyn Butler, Jane Austen and the War of 1deas, Oxford University Press, 1975, reprinted with new introduction, 1987.

Butler argues that despite the tendency of many readers and critics, Austen's novels are not "progressive" novels, but rather novels that reinforce a conservative, orthodox thinking in tune with her era.

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic. The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, Yale University Press, 1979.

Gilbert and Gubar explore the struggles nineteenth century women Writers endured while publishing their works and how society reacted to the Ideas and perspectives of women authors.

J David Grey, managing editor, A Walton Litz and Brian Southam, consulting editors, The Jane Austen Companion, Macmillan...