"Throughout his career, Southam was the best kind of literary critic. A generous, witty and humane scholar" — The Guardian
BRIAN CHARLES SOUTHAM WAS A PIONEER in Jane Austen studies as in literary criticism more generally. It was typical of this open-minded, generous, and supportive man that he spent so much of his life enlarging the appreciation of major authors by means of annotated editions, monographs, chapters in companions, encyclopedias and handbooks, essays and addresses, casebooks, student guides, and collections of criticism.
Southam’s general editorship of more than a hundred volumes in the Critical Heritage series, together with further collections in The Routledge Critics, was especially significant. As he rightly argued, critical responses over time reflect an author’s changing image, but they also open up larger questions. The documentation of Austen’s contemporary reputation, for instance, “is important to our understanding of the rise of the novel in critical esteem.”
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Some essays have been published in different journals and/or books, with various editorial changes