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This important study investigates how Austen worked with, and played upon, the cracks and faultlines which time had uncovered in the ideals of polite conversation. In a wide-ranging argument combining intellectual history and literary stylistics, Bharat Tandon explores such activities as flirtation and ventriloquism, in order to show how a form of conversational morality is what Austen's novels both describe and set out to achieve.
'Tandon has written a magisterial work.' —'Choice Magazine'
List of Plates and Figures; Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. The Morality of Conversation; Interlude. Differential Narrative: Austen's Early Fiction; 2. Flirting; 3. Throwing the Voice; 4. Habit and Habitation; Notes; Bibliography; Index