In this course, we will read all of Jane Austen’s major works (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion) and focus on issues of narrative technique, the marriage plot, psychological interiority, class, sociability and society, family, the slave trade, class, and the picturesque.  Secondary readings will help to illuminate Austen’s indebtedness to earlier fiction, innovations in her formal technique, and her considerations of contemporary issues.