"Everybody likes to go their own way- to choose their own time and manner of devotion."

"She knew what she knew, like a sound dogmatist: she did not know what she did not — like a sound agnostic."

"Comedy was implicit in the manner in which she told her story. Her irony, her delicate ruthless irony, was of the sub…"

"Jane Austen has been criticized as trivial by the same enlightened race of critics as think her incapable of depictin…"

"[A]s her would-be biographer, I had to face the fact that information about Jane Austen the woman was limited and fra…"

"Miss Austen's language deserves closer attention than it has received. She is not indeed one of the great writers of …"

"The daughter and sister of clergymen of the Established Church, she began life in the conservative fold, and even as …"

"The essence of her certainty is that the reforms she perceives to be necessary are within the attitudes of individual…"

"[I]n Northanger Abbey Jane Austen develops...her version of the revolutionary character, the man or woman who by acti…"

"Jane Austen influenced me very much in a general way. I read her early with great pleasure and often since, and I thi…"