5 Badass Female Authors to Check Out if You Love Jane Austen

Ever since the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series, Austen fandom has come alive in a major way. And while she's always had a pretty lively fan base (fun fact: early Janeites were predominantly male) the nineties really helped introduce an explosive number of adaptations. Plus, let's not forget about the fact that P&P is basically at the heart of every hate-to-love trope in contemporary romance novels. That said, Austen wasn't the only early female novelist to speak on the social inequalities involved with being a woman in the Romantic period. In fact, the feminist undertones in her predecessors novels is impossible to ignore. 

If you've made your way through Austen's Big Six (multiple times already), here are five awesome (and often forgotten about) female authors who inspired and influenced her:

1. Frances Burney
Recommended starting place: Evelina (1778)

Burney was one of Austen's favorites, and it's pretty clear why--her influence shines through in Austen's own novels.

Evelina is often considered a precursor to Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and with Burney's deft use of satire to highlight the harsh conditions of being a woman in the eighteenth-century, it's super obvious why. And with some seriously cringe-worthy encounters in Evelina, coupled with the #metoo and #WhyIDidntReport movements, it's alarmingly clear that Evelina faces a lot of the same struggles that women in the twenty-first century do--making Burney's biting social commentary even more poignant, perhaps, than Austen's. Check it out:

2. Charlotte Lennox
Recommended starting place: The Female Quixote (1772)

Lennox was another of Austen's faves--so much so in fact that Northanger Abbey updates and is modeled by it, with Catherine Morland making some of the same mistakes Lennox's Arabella makes. While TFQ can be a bit more repetitive and tedious to read through, it's cool to see a novel(ist) that Queen Austen herself fangirled over and adapted for her own use (even cooler considering Lennox was parodying Don Quixote in the first place. It's almost like Austen was always meant to be in a never ending cycle of fandom).

3. Maria Edgeworth
Recommended starting place: Castle Rackrent (1800)

Edgeworth is credited as another major influencer on Austen. While Castle Rackrent doesn't have a domestic romance plot, its influence on Austen is impossible to miss--especially since Edgeworth's satire and scathing social critique flies off the page. But Austen isn't the only famous author Edgeworth had an impact on--her novel is often cited as the first regional English novel and first historical saga series (so move over Sir Walter Scott). Considering her huge impact on the history of the English novel, it's a shame she isn't more widely read.

AND THE E-BOOK IS FREE!

4. Charlotte Smith
Recommended starting place: Emmeline (1788)

Smith's has a ton in common with Austen's, not least of all the fact that both women focused their attentions on the difficulties of being a woman in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with little choice and power over their own lives. Smith pulls more from her Romantic and Gothic roots than Austen, but fans of Jane shouldn't discount this powerful story--one that unconventionally reveals the social struggles of its author.

5. Ann Radcliffe
Recommended starting place: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

Going to be honest, working through Radcliffe's most enduring work is a commitment, but any fans of Northanger Abbey will know the profound effect this novel had on Austen's writing and her heroine, Catherine Morland. While Austen is traditionally known for her use of realism, it's really cool to see a fantastical and supernatural novel that inspired her writing in unconventional ways.

AND THE E-BOOK IS FREE!