Status Updates From What Matters in Jane Austen...

"Did Jane Austen know how good she was? It is a question often asked by her aficionados . . . Here is the reason why that question . . . is irresistible: she did things with fiction . . . with character, with dialogue, with English sentences, that had never been done before . . . [S]he was in some ways the most surprising genius of English Literature. She lived in an age distinguished by its literary intimacies . . .