Jane's Fame Quotes

“Katherine Mansfield, clearly speaking personally, had remarked wryly in 1924 that “the true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone—reading between the lines—has become the secret friend of their author,”54”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“What calm lives they had, those people! No worries about the French Revolution, or the crashing struggle of the Napoleonic wars. Only manners controlling natural passion so far as they could, together with cultured explanations of any mischances .34”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“1894, George Saintsbury was confident that “a fondness for Miss Austen” could be considered “itself a patent of exemption from any possible charge of vulgarity.”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“Aunt Cassandra used to relish rereading letters of Jane’s “triumphing over the married women of her acquaintance, and rejoicing in her own freedom”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“Mrs. Bennet, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Elton, the Steele sisters, Fanny Dashwood, Elizabeth Elliot, Mrs. Clay, Lady Catherine de Bourgh … all differentiated, all unique in their unpleasantness.”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“A life of usefulness, literature and religion, was not by any means a life of event.”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“she really does seem to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, & how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.34”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“Even Austen’s famous first sentence has an echo in one of Burney’s: “[It is] received wisdom among matchmakers, that a young lady without fortune has a less and less chance of getting off upon every public appearance.”44”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World

“fame can be thought of as having four elements: a person, an accomplishment, their immediate publicity, and what posterity makes of them.”
― Claire Harman, Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World