The Pride of Austen Critics: a Prejudice?

List: Works discussed in this essay

"To the multitude," Jane Austen's nephew told readers of A Memoir of Jane Austen, which he published in 1870, "her works appeared tame and commonplace, pale in colouring, and sadly deficient in incident and interest." But her family found consolation in perceiving -- and promoting -- the novels as magnets for a few talented and discriminating readers. "We were sometimes cheered," J.E.

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