Books by Jenny (Columbia University Davidson

An original and highly engaging account of one of the most influential writers in the history of English literature, by novelist and leading academic Jenny Davidson. Looking at Austen's novels through a writer's lens the book considers how Jane Austen's fiction works and why it matters.

Jenny Davidson considers the arguments that define hypocrisy as a moral and political virtue in its own right. She shows that these were arguments that thrived in eighteenth-century Britain's culture of politeness. Davidson examines the attitude of such writers as Locke and Austen towards hypocrisy.