"Most works in realism tell a succession of such abject truths; they are deeply in earnest, every detail is true, and yet the whole finally tumbles to the ground — true but without significance. How did Jane Austen save her novels from that danger? They appear to be compact of abject truth. Their events are excruciatingly unimportant; and yet, with R. Crusoe, they will probably outlast all Fielding, Scott, George Elliot, Thackeray, and Dickens. The art is so consummate that the secret is hidden; peer at them as hard as one may; shake them; take them apart; one cannot see how it is done."
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Novelists from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomWomen authors from EnglandJane AustenWomen born before the 19th century
Original Language: English
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Sources
Thornton Wilder, A preface for Our Town (1938)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jane_Austen
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Jane Austen
1775 – 1817
englische Schriftstellerin
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