This chapter demonstrates the pervasive presence of the rhetorical figure of apophasis in Austen’s writing. Guides to rhetoric, in the eighteenth century and earlier, describe apophasis as occurring when a person claims not to speak of something and in saying so, speaks of it. Austen evidently enjoyed the irony of the figure, as her juvenilia especially demonstrates. But she also appreciated its efficiency and tact, touching, but not elaborating, upon subject matter. This chapter argues that Austen saw common statements of inexpressibility as apophatic, as they draw attention to supposedly suppressed material. Many characters in Austen’s fiction claim not to be able to express themselves. Austen transforms an often cliched form of expression into a subtle narrative movement towards what characters do not utter. In this way, apophasis contributes to the development of free indirect discourse, sharing with this technique the dynamic of speaking and not speaking at the same time.

Austen has long been celebrated for her skill in writing dialogue and for its dramatic qualities. This chapter analyzes her dialogue by drawing attention to the way she attributes speech to speakers. There are few extant comments by Jane Austen on her own novels, but she did write of Pride and Prejudice that “a ‘said he’ or a ‘said she’ would sometimes make the dialogue more immediately clear”. This chapter examines this statement closely and it points to the significance of “free direct speech” – unattributed direct speech – within her fiction. By minimizing attribution in this way, Austen cultivated dramatic dialogue and the depiction of speech across a group, but she also accepted the possibilities of ambiguity and error. Free direct speech is an underexplored speech category that is closely related to free indirect discourse, which is arguably Austen’s greatest technical contribution to the novel. As well as examining free direct speech in its own right, this chapter argues for its significance in the development of representing consciousness.

The conclusion to this book reflects on how compression and concision may have been fundamental to Austen’s drafting process, especially as revealed in the manuscript to her unfinished novel, Sanditon, written in the year of her death. By the time that Austen was writing Emma, at least, she was drafting strikingly elliptical prose, as in the strawberry-picking episode at Donwell Abbey. The often similarly fragmented sentences of Sanditon are not jottings or shorthand to be expanded later, as they were once thought to be. Rather, Austen’s manuscripts suggest that she channelled the contingencies of the drafting process into some of her most forward-reaching stylistic developments, as she sought to capture the spontaneity of the human voice.

This introduction traces the critical reception of Jane Austen’s fiction in terms of the economy of her writing, especially as promoted by George Henry Lewes in the nineteenth century. The chapter examines how Austen often commented on her selection of material, and the interest it might generate, when she wrote her private letters and it points to the relevance of this self-consciousness for her fiction. The chapter goes on to examine young Jane Austen’s fascination with constricted writing spaces as she composed her juvenilia and her similar interest in physically constricted domestic spaces, an interest that continued into her published novels. The chapter argues that the radically contracted spaces of the juvenilia are foundational for Austen’s later writing.

Chapter 1 considers Austen’s interest in novelistic length, as articulated in her early writing, especially in ‘Catharine, or the Bower’, Northanger Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice. Austen’s early fiction returns repeatedly to the subjects of fictional length and organization, often with reference to history writing. The chapter goes on to consider the genesis of Pride and Prejudice and the “contractions” that Cassandra Austen remembered her sister having made. Austen’s interest in narrative organization resonates with contemporary critical writing on the novel, especially the criticism of Anna Barbauld who evoked picturesque theory in describing successful narrative construction.