“Something like mine”: Catherine Hutton, Jane Austen, and Feminist Recovery Work

Despite her output and connection to several well-known early nineteenth-century writers, Catherine Hutton has remained almost completely absent from the historical record. This essay begins some recovery work on Hutton, focusing on the ways in which she styled herself as a woman novelist and depicted women’s reading within her texts. In addressing the question of authorial self-fashioning, I also examine the comparisons Hutton made between herself and Jane Austen and build on the work of contemporary feminist critics to consider the benefits and drawbacks to reading understudied women writers in relation to Austen.