| Whenever I take up "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and
Sensibility," I feel like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel. I
am quite sure I know what his sensations would be -- and his private comments.
He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians went
filing self-complacently along. - "Jane Austen" manuscript. Published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1999. |
 Oxford University Press edition |
Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that
does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book.
- quotes in Remembered Yesterdays, Robert Underwood Johnson
To me his prose is unreadable--like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference.
I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible.
It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 1/18/1909
Jane Austen's books, too, are absent from this library. Just that one omission
alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in
it.
- Following the Equator
I haven't any right to criticise books, and I don't do it except when I hate
them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that
I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every
time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and
beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 9/13/1898
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search