"Jane Austen's six complete novels and her juvenilia are examined in the context of civil society and gender. Steiner's study uses a variety of contexts to appraise Austen's work: Scottish Enlightenment theories of societal development, early-Romantic discourses on gender roles, modern sociological theories on the civilizing process and postmodern feminist positions on moral development and interpersonal relations. Austen is presented as a writer who not only participated in late eighteenth-century debates, but who is able to address twenty-first-century concerns of a theoretical and practical nature."--P. [4] of cover.