Here's what fellow writers had to say...
Posted by P. Bingham on February 02, 1998 at 23:21:39:
In response to Jane Austen and E.M. Forster, written by MB on January 28, 1998 at 16:24:12
I've taken this off the back of Jane Austen, A Life by David Nokes...
"Don't talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me the exact spot where Louise Musgrove fell!" Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"she seems to have reached the really insurpassable degree of perfection without a formulated philosophy, and merely by her clear vision of the true relation of art to life; but however she came to be what she was, she was unquestionably great." William Dean Howells
"She deals, As Walter Scott said, with "common place things, the involvements, feelings and characters of ordinary life"; nothing very much happens in her books and yet, when you come to the bottom of the page, you eagerly turn it in order to find what happens next. Nothing very much does and again you eagerly turn the page. The novelist who has the power to achieve this has the most precious gift a novelist can possess." W. Somerset Maugham
"A little aloof, a little inscrutable and mysterious, she will always remain, but serene and beautiful also because of her greatness as an artist." Virginia woolf
"The techniques of the novel are above praise... her mastery of the art she chose, or that chose her, is complete: How she achieved it no one will ever know."
Elizabeth Bowen
"It is possible to say of Jane Austen, as perhaps we can say of no other writer, that the opinion which are held of her work are almost as interesting, and almost as important to think about, as the work itself." Lionel Trilling
"She is perfect in literature as Mozart is in music, and she gives me the same sort of feeling. But apart from that, she is the first of the great novelists." Frank O'Connor
Thought it might be interesting,
Patricia Bingham
- Thanks, Patricia! MB 13:33:31 2/03/98
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- I saw that too! P. Bingham 15:16:10 2/04/98
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- I saw that too! P. Bingham 15:16:10 2/04/98
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