In honor of the bicentennial of Jane Austen’s death, the Oxford University Press (OUP) has created a virtual anthology of recent work on Austen, including an essay by Professor of English Dr. Douglas Murray. All of the essays appeared in Review of English Studies, the OUP’s flagship journal of historical criticism.
The editor’s introduction to Murray essay said, “History for Austen also discloses more than her characters know. In ‘Donwell Abbey and Box Hill: Purity and Danger in Jane Austen’s Emma’, Douglas Murray re-reads Emma in light of techniques adopted from cultural and historical geography, with particular focus on Box Hill’s long-established identity as a site of social conflict and transgressive acts.”
To view the anthology, click here.
Additionally, during the month of June, Murray is serving as a Visiting Fellow at the Chawton House Library in Hampshire, England. The Chawton estate was owned by Austen’s brother Edward and she revised or drafted all six of her novels in a cottage in Chawton Village. During the last two decades, Edward’s manor house has become a preeminent center for the study of women’s writing from 1600-1830.