Fun Friday: Jane Austen Responds to Her Critics

“Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig [Austen] up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” –Mark Twain

“Every time Mark Twain uses a gratuitous racial epithet in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I want to dig him up and beat him over the skull with his own shin-bone.”–Jane Austen

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“I dislike Jane, and am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers. They are in another class. Could never see anything in Pride and Prejudice.”–Vladimir Nabokov, to Edmund Wilson

“I dislike Nabokov, and am prejudiced, in fact, against all middle-aged men who write books glorifying sex between older European men and very young girls. They are in another class. Could never see anything in Lolita.” –Jane Austen

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“I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face.” –Charlotte Brontë, to literary critic George Henry Lewes, on Emma

“I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? A wife in an attic!” –Jane Austen, on Jane Eyre

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“[Austen] typifies ‘personality’ instead of character … and she is, to my feeling, English in the bad, mean, snobbish sense of the word.” –Henry James

“[James] typifies ‘punctuation’ instead of character … and he is, to my feeling, neither English nor European in the bad, mean, snobbish, emotionally constipated, over-semi-colon-ed sense of the word.” –Jane Austen

Okay, SOME of these Jane Austen quotes may be a little-less-than accurate! But it’s always fun to speculate! Which reminds me to remind YOU all that tomorrow is our discussion of Godmersham Park at 1pm, a change from our usual time. It will involve a discussion of the book followed by a Q&A with the author. Register for the Zoom meeting here!