Status Updates From The Common Reader

To the Duchess of Somerset belongs the credit of investigating the proper way of cooking guinea-pigs; but Lady Dorothy was one of the first to serve up a dish of these little creatures at luncheon in Charles Street.

Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to give Jane Austen the supreme delight of slicing their heads off.

"The novel had to justify its existence by telling a true story and preaching a sound moral." Many a loudmouth today, even amongst the young, would have us return to those times.