"...an artist cannot do anything slovenly."
"I am gratified by her having pleasure in what I write -- but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning Criticism may not hurt my stile, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration, or a metaphor in every corner of the room. Could my Ideas flow as fast as the rain in the store-closet it would be charming."
"I flatter myself, however, that you can understand very little of it from this description. -- Heaven forbid that I should ever offer such encouragement to Explanations as to give a clear one on any occasion myself!"Jane Austen never wrote down a serious self-conscious analysis or manifesto of her artistic powers and goals, so that all we have are incidental statements in some of her letters. These are frequently facetious, or part of informal letters to family members, and should not necessarily be taken as solemn statements of deeply-held views.
``The progress of the friendship between Catherine [Morland] and Isabella was quick as its beginning had been warm... and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; -- for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding -- joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Miltonare eulogized by a thousand pens, -- there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader -- I seldom look into novels -- Do not imagine that I often read novels -- It is really very well for a novel." -- Such is the common cant. -- "And what are you reading, Miss --?" "Oh! it is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.''
"Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore every body, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort."
"I have read [Byron's] The Corsair, mended my petticoat, and have nothing else to do."Jane Austen limited her subject-matter in a number of ways in her novels
[Wife to husband:] "Four months after you were gone, I was delivered of this Girl, but dreading your just resentment at her not proving the Boy you wished, I took her to a Haycock and laid her down. A few weeks afterwards, you returned, and fortunately for me, made no enquiries. Satisfied within myself of the wellfare of my Child, I soon forgot that I had one, insomuch that when we shortly afterward found her in the very Haycock I had placed her, I had no more idea of her being my own than you had."
"Mrs. F. A. has had one fainting fit lately; it came on as usual after eating a hearty dinner, but did not last long."
-- Jane Austen,
"Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy could never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Anne was sporting with from Camden Place to Westgate Buildings. It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way."And in a letter of November 8th 1796, Jane Austen wrote "I have had a... letter from Buller; I was afraid he would oppress me with his felicity & his love for his wife, but this is not the case; he calls her simply Anna without any angelic embellishments".
Thus one Anne Romilly wrote in 1814 that
"
"Miss Austen was surely a great novelist. What she did, she did perfectly.
Her work, as far as it goes, is faultless. She wrote of the times in which
she lived, of the class of people with which she associated, and in the
language which was usual to her as an educated lady. Of romance, -- what
we generally mean when we speak of romance -- she had no tinge. Heroes
and heroines with wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of
great criminals and hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places
us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us
with an unconscious accuracy how men should act to women, and women act
to men. It is not that her people are all good; -- and, certainly, they
are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues
of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of
folly I know no novelist who has beaten her. The letters of Mr Collins
a clergyman in Pride and Prejudice, would move laughter in a low-church
archbishop."
``
"I... do not think the worse of him for having a brain so very different from mine. ... And he deserves better treatment than to be obliged to read any more of my works."Here are some deprecatory quotes on Austen:
-- Jane Austen,