Austen's novels received only moderate renown when they were published, with some seeing her novels "as overtly moral," although Sir
Walter Scott in particular praised her work: "That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." In Austen's final novel,
Persuasion, several characters read a work by Scott and praise it, but Marianne Dashwood in
Sense and Sensibility had already counted Scott as one of her favorites.
Austen also earned the admiration of
Macaulay (who thought that in the world there were no compositions which approached nearer to perfection),
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Sydney Smith, Edward FitzGerald, and the Prince Regent, who told his librarian to give her a guided tour of his London residence Carlton House's library. He also gave "permission" (effectively a command) for
Emma to be dedicated to him.
Twentieth century scholars rank her among the greatest literary geniuses of the English language, sometimes even comparing her to
Shakespeare. Lionel Trilling and
Edward Said have both written treatises on Austen's works. Said referred extensively to
Mansfield Park in his 1993 work,
Culture and Imperialism, and Trilling wrote in an essay on
Mansfield Park:
:"It was Jane Austen who first represented the specifically modern personality and the culture in which it had its being. Never before had the moral life been shown as she shows it to be, never before had it been conceived to be so complex and difficult and exhausting.
Hegel speaks of the "secularization of spirituality" as a prime characteristic of the modern epoch, and Jane Austen is the first to tell us what this involves. She is the first novelist to represent society, the general culture, as playing a part in the moral life, generating the concepts of "sincerity" and "vulgarity" which no earlier time would have understood the meaning of, and which for us are so subtle that they defy definition, and so powerful that none can escape their sovereignty. She is the first to be aware of the Terror which rules our moral situation, the ubiquitous anonymous judgment to which we respond, the necessity we feel to demonstrate the purity of our secular spirituality, whose dark and dubious places are more numerous and obscure than those of religious spirituality, to put our lives and styles to the question ..."
Trilling's essay has attracted much subsequent literary discussion as well.
Negative views of Austen have been notable, with severe detractors frequently accusing her writing of being unliterary and middle-brow.
Charlotte Brontë criticized the narrow scope of Austen's fiction:
:"Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as 'outré' or extravagant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood… What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death—this Miss Austen ignores… Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not
senseless) woman, if this is heresy—I cannot help it."
Mark Twain's reaction was also negative:
:"Jane Austen? Why, I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book."
:"When I take up one of Jane Austen's books,... such as
Pride and Prejudice, I feel like a barkeeper entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so."
Rudyard Kipling felt differently, going so far as to write the short story "The Janeites" about a group of soldiers who were also Austen fans, as well as two poems praising "England's Jane" and providing her with posthumous true love.
Austen's literary strength lies in the delineation of character, especially of women, by delicate touches arising out of the most natural and everyday incidents in the life of the
middle and
upper classes, from which her subjects are generally taken. Her characters, though of quite ordinary types, are drawn with such firmness and precision and with such significant detail as to keep their individuality intact through their entire development, and they are uncoloured by her own personality. Her view of life seems largely genial, with a strong dash of gentle but keen irony.
Some contemporary readers may find the world she describes, in which people's chief concern is securing advantageous marriages, unliberated and disquieting. During her time, options were limited, and both women and men often married for financial considerations. Female writers worked within the similarly narrow genre of romance. Part of Austen's reputation rests on how well she integrates observations on the human condition within a convincing love story. Much of the tension in her novels arises from balancing financial necessity against other concerns: love, friendship, honor and self-respect. It is also important to point out that, at the time, romance novels were seen as a clever modern variation on the knightly romances of medieval times; these were damsels engaged in adventure, seeking their fortunes and carrying out quests.
There are two museums dedicated to Jane Austen. The Jane Austen Centre in Bath is a public museum located in a Georgian House in Gay Street, just a few doors down the street from number 25 where Austen stayed in 1805. The Jane Austen's House Museum is located in Chawton cottage, in Hampshire, where Austen lived from 1809 to 1817.
